The BPF’s 91st Annual Dinner was topped off with the BPF Energy Award, which recognised the most impressive approach to energy efficiency. The winner was WSBL Ltd.
BPF
Based in Blackburn, WSBL Ltd specialises in providing noise insulation and vibration damping materials for a wide range of industries, such as oil and gas, automotive and construction. Some of the projects they’ve completed include introducing a composite of mineral wool and WB barrier in the 30-metre-long SunSeeker yacht and PUNF Foam between BBC stages to lower the airborne noise.
Editor Giulia Daniele caught up with Liam Robinson to discuss this award.
[Giulia Daniele] What does winning this award mean to you?
[Liam Robinsonn] WSBL came under new ownership just over three years ago. In that time, it’s often been quite a tough journey with us needing to negotiate polymer supply crises, unprecedented increases in energy bills and raw material costs. On top of this, we even had a fire in our warehouse.
Winning an award like this shows that, despite all the challenges, we have made much progress over the last three years, and we feel really privileged to receive such recognition.
Winning an award like this shows that, despite all the challenges, we have made much progress over the last three years, and we feel really privileged to receive such recognition.
[GD] What were some of the challenges that the company had to overcome to reach this achievement?
[LR] Our longest-serving employee has been with the company for 45 years. We realised that our main transformer had been with the business even longer than that, being installed in 1958 and only supplying 68% of the energy to the production facility we were buying. We understood that investing to upgrade this was a necessary first step.
Then, we have been able to make further gains by optimising shift patterns, streamlining production processes and continuing to focus on product quality. This is so we could reduce the need to ‘do things twice’. This has involved input from all team members, who have responded to the challenge by becoming more aware of their actions, going so far as to turn off lights when leaving rooms.
We have been able to make further gains by optimising shift patterns, streamlining production processes and continuing to focus on product quality.
[GD] What does this award mean for the future of WSBL?
[LR] We are on a journey of improvement across all aspects of the business, so we are hopeful that this award is just the start and a sign of things to come.
Energy reduction is just one area of focus for our management team. In addition, we continue to do significant work in utilising recycled materials and improving our own internal recycling facilities to enable us to offer closed-loop solutions to our customers.
All in all, WSBL Ltd envisions a future where it not only focuses on energy reduction and recycling but also continues to improve processes and practices across all areas of the business.