Creating a ‘greener’ culture for a sustainable future

Witham Group’s aim is to always operate within a climate of excellence – that means not only the best performing products and service, but also the company’s methods of manufacturing, energy use, waste disposal, packaging, fuel efficiency and welfare of those affected by its activities are being constantly monitored.

As part of Witham Group’s commitment to put the environment at the heart of what the company does, it has developed an award-winning range of environmentally-sensitive products, all designed to help reduce lubricant impact. The business is also investing in unique, award-winning technology to drastically reduce its carbon footprint. In fact, following on from a large external energy audit recently, Witham Group can now officially say that its lubricants are blended in a carbon-neutral way. To the company’s knowledge, it is the first and only lubricant blender and manufacturer in the world to currently able to claim this.

Using sophisticated energy monitoring equipment, Witham Group can accurately measure the total energy used in the blending plant and measure the amount of energy produced by its solar panels. Up until the end of May 2021, the company produced 33.104kwh more than it used in the blending plant. To put that into perspective, the average household uses approximately 250kwh of electricity per month, so its current surplus would power the average home for an incredible eight years. These savings are all down to a unique new blending process that uses ultrasound technology

Traditional manufacturing vs unique new blending solution

Throughout the world, lubricant manufacturing is typically a very high energy use, high cost and time-restrictive process. Base oils and additives are often heated to various temperatures and ‘blended’ to form the different specification and viscosity types of lubricant products for engine oils, hydraulic oils, gear oils, brake fluids, transmission oils, and industrial oils and grease products. The necessity to improve both the time, cost, and environmental impact of the lubricant manufacturing industry, drove Witham Group to develop and employ an innovative new process based on the use of ultrasound. ‘Blendtek’, as the process is called, removes the need for base oils and additives being heated at all, therefore eliminating the use of traditional gas and or oil-fired boilers for heat energy.

As manufacturers of a huge range of different lubricants, this new technique enables Witham Group to blend thousands of tonnes of products using energy from solar panels and a simple 13amp plug, saving time, energy and drastically reducing its carbon footprint. To blend a simple 10t batch of oil product now takes less than 20 minutes, whereas previously the same batch would have taken 3–4 hours to complete in total.

This new ground-breaking process has been tried and tested by the largest technology providers in the world, independently audited and reviewed, and is fully approved for use.

Incredible environmental savings

Witham Group reckons it has saved over 20k tonnes of carbon emissions since using the process, and heated the equivalent of over 110 homes in the UK for a year. Its gas consumption has been reduced by just under 80% and the company continues to expand the use of the Blendtek technology within its business.

Witham Group group managing director, Nigel R. Bottom, said: “This exciting breakthrough is all about changing the environmental impact of lubricant manufacturing in the first place
So many environmental schemes and businesses look to offset their impact by using ‘carbon dumps’ or ‘sinks’, and other environmental and climate protection projects. We have instead, come up with a way that prevents the creation of high energy use in the first place.”

Understandably, Witham Group is immensely proud of this manufacturing innovation, and is determined to help other blenders improve their own sustainability profiles and improve the oil industry’s reputation with substantial impact.

Helping others to become more sustainable 

The company also supports its customers in their own drive to improve the environmental credentials with their supply chain. The lubricants Witham Group provides are blended carbon neutrally, the packaging they arrive in is made from recycled materials (30% minimum), the lorries used to deliver the products are running on manufacturer-approved fuel-efficient lubricants, and the majority of the extensive fleet of vehicles are to the latest European emission rating currently available.

As part of its commitment to put the environment at the heart of what the company does, Witham Group has developed a growing range of Biolube, Prolan and Enviroyl environmentally-sensitive products, all designed to help reduce lubricant impact and pollution in the countryside, in food production, in waterways and for the end user themselves.

Bulk storage tanks

For Witham Group, helping its customers with all their lubricants and paint requirements doesn’t mean just getting the right oil – it means working together to achieve better efficiencies, appearances of all machinery and equipment and help with safety and storage.

As such, the company can supply a range of specialist bulk storage tanks for workshops and outbuildings. It can also help advise on the best way to install the tanks – which, for standard sizes, is free of charge. The customer’s lubricants are filled up in the colour-coded tanks as required, and the tanks have sight gauges, taps or pumps and come labelled with the different product names and their application.

Simple, clean and easy to use, these tanks provide important health and safety requirements for lubricant storage.

The benefits of using Witham Group’s bulk storage tanks are:

• Keeps workshops clean and tidy
• Helps the environment by using less container packaging
• Creates more space in workshops and garages
• Easy to distinguish different lubricants for various uses
• Helps avoid oil spills and contamination
• Long-lasting storage solution – with good maintenance, the tanks can last up to 50 years.