Princess opens leather group’s thermal energy plant
15/07/2010
Employing 380 of the group’s 500 workers, the Bridge of Weir facility is the largest leather production site in the UK. Across the group, SLG has a turnover of £65 million and is exporting leather to more than 40 countries around the world.
The thermal energy plant is the result of a £6 million investment with SLG providing all of the funding itself. It is an important part of the group’s aim of being self-sufficient in its energy use by 2015 and of a new initiative to market leather from all its facilities as low-carbon leather.
Solid waste from all SLG’s Scottish sites is being transported to the thermal energy plant to produce heat energy and oil from it. The heat energy is already being used to heat water for the tanning operations at Bridge of Weir and to power the driers on site. The oil, produced from skin grease from the fleshings the group produces, is highly in demand among manufacturers of industrial lubricant and biodiesel and SLG is currently selling most of the oil it produces, but it has the option of using this by-product onsite too.
“We are very pleased that the thermal energy plant is up and running,” said SLG chairman, Jonathan Muirhead, on the day of the formal opening. “Our customers, particularly those in the automotive industry have shown a lot of interest in this and in our low carbon leather and we have already picked up new business as a result. This is a landmark, a first for the leather industry.”
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