The Heppenheim factory is one of Unilever's main production locations for ice cream. These include well-known products from the Heartbrand line, including Magnum, Feast, Viennetta, and Carte d'Or. High production quantities form the basis for supplying other parts of the European market. Just one of the five Magnum production lines in Heppenheim produces more than 20,000 ice creams per hour. This requires a lot of energy. In order to reduce the compressed air consumption of the pneumatic components, the ability to visualize and measure compressed air consumption was of huge importance to Unilever. Previously, the consumption on the individual production lines had not been determined. “Until then we were just unaware,” said Alexander Hemmerich, Automation Engineer at the Unilever Plant, Heppenheim.“Air is not visible, so it is not immediately obvious if consumption is too high.”As part of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan there had already been successes in the plant in other areas. Energy-intensive geared motors were replaced with more efficient ones, achieving energy savings of up to 60 percent. Also, numerous 18 kW ventilators in the cooling tunnels, which previously ran for 24 hours in continuous operation, were converted to frequency converters with quadratic torque. This lowered the energy consumption of the ventilators by around 40 percent.
Heppenheim Plant
Langnesestrasse 1
64646 Heppenheim
Area of business: Production of Heartbrand ice cream