It’s official – our blending is carbon neutral!

Witham Group can announce that following on from our large external energy audit our lubricants are now officially blended in a carbon neutral way. We are, to our knowledge the ONLY lubricant blender and manufacturer in the world to be able to claim this!

“Our objective was to become the first lubricant manufacturer in the world that has a carbon neutral footprint for its blending process” Nigel R. Bottom – Group Managing Director, Witham Group

Now, using sophisticated energy monitoring equipment, we can accurately measure the total energy used in the blending plant and measure the amount of energy produced by our solar panels. Up until the end of May 2021, we have produced 33.104 kwh more than we used in the blending plant. To put that into perspective, the average household uses approximately 250kwh of electricity per month so our current surplus would power the average home for an incredible 8 years. These savings are all down to a unique new blending process that uses ultrasound technology…

Traditional Lubricant Manufacturing

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, has driven Witham Group to develop and employ an innovative new process…

Our Unique New Oil Blending Solution – Blendtek

We are extremely proud to have developed and now employ a unique blending system 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 us to blend thousands of tonnes of products using energy from solar panels and a simple 13amp plug, saving time, energy and drastically reducing our carbon footprint. To blend a simple 10 tonne batch of oil product now takes less than 20 minutes, whereas previously the same batch would have taken 3 to 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

To evaluate the savings to the environment, we have 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. Our gas consumption has been reduced by just under 80% and now in 2021, we are sharing these results and our story of the new ultrasound way of blending with the lubricant industry. We continue to expand the use of the Blendtek technology within our business.

“This exciting breakthrough is all about changing the environmental impact of lubricant manufacturing in the first place” says Nigel R Bottom
– Group Managing Director. “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.”

We are immensely proud of this manufacturing innovation, and we believe we are the first company in the world to blend in a carbon neutral process. We are 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 

We also know our customers are supported by us in their own drive to improve the environmental credentials with their supply chain. The lubricants we provide are blended carbon neutrally, the packaging they arrive in is made from recycled materials (30% minimum), the lorries we deliver the products with 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.

To read more about our environmental initiatives, click here.

To visit the Blendtek Solutions website, click here.