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Benchmarking – Maximizing Your Brewery’s Efficiency
By Brandon Conard & Josh Amaris
Like any industry, breweries must use its resources efficiently in order to be sustainable. Benchmarking is a valuable tool in monitoring a brewery’s resource usage in relation to its overall production. Benchmarking is the process of comparing the cost, cycle time, productivity, or quality of a specific process or method to another that is widely considered to be an industry standard or best practice. In brewing, benchmarking can be applied to gauge how efficient a brewery is in relationship to others in uses of resources.
Benchmarking Basics – What to Measure
The metrics used in benchmarking should be compared with similar sized breweries as scale affects the outputs. Some common metrics are listed below.
KwH/barrel of beer: This is a calculation of total electricity consumption over the amount of beer produced. Be sure all electricity is accounted for, even if it is a renewable source.
Gallons H20/barrel of beer: This shows how effectively breweries use water. If water is purchased, use total water consumption figures. If water is well-drawn or poorly quantified, be sure to quantify both wastewater as well as water leaving the brewery as beer.
Fuel (such as propane LBS)/barrel of beer: As brewing is a heat intensive process, quantifying fuel use against beer production is useful. All fuel sources should be considered (such as boilers, forklifts, and transportation of supplies on site).
Green house gas emissions/barrel of beer: The calculated carbon footprint is reported in total metric tons of CO2 equivalent. This figure can then be compared with total beer production to produce a useful metric. BlueMap Inc. recommends that breweries consider at a minimum tier I and II emissions in this calculation (althoughincluding Tier III is more representative of real footprint).
The Next Step
Having benchmarking calculations is a tool for brewery managers: t allows them to compare themselves versus other breweries, and, more importantly, to monitor their own progress over time to see if efficiency improvements are made. With the help of experienced sustainability consultants, a brewery can use these calculations to minimize its carbon footprint and to improve its overall productivity.
Brandon Conard and Josh Amaris are Sustainability Analysts at BlueMap Inc., a research firm focused on the quantification of sustainability decisions and clean tech investments for our clients. BlueMap Inc. specializes in creating profitable and innovative environmental impact reduction strategies for our clients. BlueMap's advantage is its focus on quantitative analysis to prove which strategies concurrently lower overall costs as well as environmental impact.
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