Plastics

Three companies - Monaghan Plastics, Tru Design Plastics and Tru-Test Limited - installed all-electric moulding machines.

The new machines used 9% less energy than hydraulic machines when making products with short cycle times, such as medical clips. But energy savings of nearly 80% were possible with products requiring longer cycle times, like electric fence insulators.

Talbot Plastics has installed an electric moulding machine which only uses 35% of the energy used by the old hydraulic machine. The new machine's average load for 120 plastic injection ‘shots' per hour is 2.5kW, compared with 8kW for the old one.

The company now saves $4,500 in total costs and delivers CO2 savings of nearly 11.8 tonnes a year. The new unit uses only 35% of the energy used by the old hydraulic machine.