Success Story
Pittsfield Rye
Pittsfield, MA
Pittsfield Rye has slashed their electric bill by roughly $21,000 per year. By year 10, they'll have recouped around $200,000 in real dollars that otherwise would've been spent on energy use.
Pittsfield Rye is a third-generation wholesale bakery located in western Massachusetts. Since 1929, the Robbins family has been baking and distributing artisan bread products that have not only become a local staple, but have also found widespread success with grocery chains like Big Y and Stop & Shop.
Not a small operation by any means, their facility comprises fourteen cold room environments, each with their own temperature requirements and operating conditions. The Robbins were looking for a better way to manage and maintain all of those spaces.
In addition, they were looking for a solution that could help them meet the stringent H.A.C.C.P standards as it pertains to food safety. The Robbins take that responsibility very seriously, and desired a system that would keep them on top of any issues that could compromise product integrity. Knowing their holding temperatures is important, but getting actionable insights is paramount.
NRM worked hand-in-hand with the Robbins family every step of the way to provide a solution that satisfied all of their requirements.
It began with implementing our Remote Site Manager platform, the most comprehensive controls and monitoring tool on the market. The RSM platform gives the Robbins live 24-hour access to their temperatures and settings, it equipped each refrigeration system with instant alerts that go to their email and smart phones, automatically records and logs temperature data for adhering to federal regulations, lets them initiate defrosts at any time, and allows them to manage all fourteen of their cold room environments from a single dashboard.
They use the system daily, and it has dramatically decreased the amount of time spent each day manually checking and recording temperatures.
On top of the monitoring platform, NRM’s solution also fit perfectly into the Robbins’ growing energy-efficiency portfolio. They had already installed solar panels on-site, recognizing the long-term benefits of “going green”. NRM optimized the refrigeration equipment to operate on cooling requirements, and the system hardware was retrofit with high-efficiency upgrades.
With the refrigeration improvements alone, the Robbins recoup over $20,000 in energy costs per year.
Industry
Bakery
Location
Pittsfield, MA
Implemented Measures
- Cloud-based monitoring
- CoolTrol on-site controls
- EC Motor Upgrades
- Anti-Sweat Door Heater controls
Annual Energy Savings
115,000 kWh
Annual Dollar Savings
$21,000
"Before we purchased RSM, it was literally a full-time job manually checking the temperatures of all of our refrigeration. We have five trailers, a blast freezer, a utility freezer, and a walk-in cooler. With RSM, I can simply check my iPad and have all of that information at my fingertips 24 hours a day, anywhere I am. I love the system and would highly recommend it."
— Rick Robbins, Owner
