The team at Ingham’s turkey primary processing facility in Tahmoor, New South Wales, Australia reduced the site’s water usage by 26 percent in just five months, saving 24,000 kiloliters of potable water, or the equivalent of nine Olympic-sized swimming pools.
The site processes approximately 27,000 turkeys per week, with water being an essential part of the process to produce quality products, including portioned, minced, marinated and whole turkey birds.
When Plant Manager Carolynn Wade started with the team in 2021, she commenced bringing the leadership team together comprising engineering, production, safety and quality to discuss ideas to improve the site. At the top of their list was how they could do the right thing for the environment by saving water.
The team identified a range of initiatives to reduce water usage across the site. This included preventative and reactive maintenance to resolve water leakages, working with the cleaning contractors to update their cleaning practices to use less water, and reducing the water volume in the spin chiller tanks by 14,000 liters per processing day.
The reduction in water usage has also led to less wastewater on site, freeing up the wastewater storage dams and adding the further benefit of less discharge to the local council’s wastewater treatment system by more than 200 kiloliters per day.
The team is both saving water and reducing our environmental footprint in the local community.
Involved in both the turkey and broiler sectors, Ingham’s is one of Australia's largest producers of poultry meat, supplying about 40% of the domestic poultry market. According to the WATTPoultry.com Top Companies Database, the company operates more than 340 vertically integrated facilities across Australia and New Zealand. It operates 74 breeding farms, 225 broiler farms and nine distribution centers, in addition to numerous feed mills, hatcheries, processing and further processing plants. As one of Australia's largest feed producers, Ingham’s also makes feed for poultry, horses, dairy cows and pigs.
