Best known as makers of “The World’s Best Cheddar,” Cabot Creamery makes a full line of cheese, yogurt, sour cream, cottage cheese and butter. Owned by the dairy farm families of Agri-Mark, the Cooperative has called the pristine hills around Cabot, VT its home since 1919.
As part of its organization-wide goal of addressing sustainability issues from “Farm to Fork,” Cabot Creamery has partnered with Efficiency Vermont since 2000. As a result, Cabot has embarked on an aggressive, comprehensive effort to reduce energy use and costs. Projects include:
- State-of-the-art lighting and controls, including LED lighting technology in the Visitor Center, high performance T5 technology in the Distribution Center warehouse cooler, and high performance T8 lighting in the main manufacturing plant, as well as a facility-wide retrofit at the Cut & Wrap Plant
- A new cooling system that replaces the previous electricity-intensive mechanical refrigeration with a secondary cooling loop and an exterior fluid cooler
- Numerous water conservation measures, including pressure washers, an ultraviolet light sanitizing system that recycles water for final rinses and conductivity meters that help reduce the amount of Clean in Place (CIP) water utilized
These efforts have yielded impressive results, including a 70-ton refrigeration reduction load at peak production and an annual 2 million gallon reduction in well water withdrawal.
Cabot’s extensive commitment to energy efficiency includes an annual Efficiency Summit for executive leadership and representatives from Efficiency Vermont, as well as a company Green Team that has successfully implemented projects involving energy conservation, packaging material reduction, water conservation, solid waste reduction and recycling. For its commitment to electricity conservation, Cabot was honored with a 2009 Energy Project Award from the Association of Energy Engineers.