An ingenious plant expansion in Mount Maunganui saving $500,000 a year in energy costs, has won a national award for Dominion Salt and engineers Aurecon New Zealand.

Both companies were named Innovation award winners in the 2012 EECA Awards for the project that boosted capacity at Dominion Salt's Mt Maunganui plant by 63 per cent, while improving plant efficiency by 48 per cent.

Winners of the Fisher and Paykel Innovation award, Dominion Salt and Aurecon New Zealand representatives, with Energy Minister Phil Heatley. Photo: Supplied.

Dominion Salt commissioned a major plant upgrade at its Mt Maunganui site in 2009.

Rather than simply enlarging the facility and installing the extra heat plant required, Aurecon designed a cunning solution which recovers waste heat and puts it back into the production process, improving overall energy efficiency by 48 per cent.

This reduced natural gas consumption per tonne of salt by 33 per cent and cut CO2 emissions by more than 3,000 tonnes per year.

Production targets were exceeded too: capacity has increased 63 per cent to a potential 76,000 tonnes of salt a year.

Dominion Salt is now well placed to meet growing demand from customers in 15 countries across Asia and South America.

The bottom line benefits are also helping the company compete internationally: it's saving $500,000 a year in energy costs, which will grow to $900,000 when the plant hits full capacity.

EECA Chief Executive Mike Underhill says the project was ground-breaking in the way it had put energy efficiency at the heart of the project.

'Energy is a major input cost for manufacturers. Getting those costs down – and improving the carbon footprint of the process – improves Kiwi exporters' ability to compete internationally.

'Dominion Salt is an excellent example of this in action. I'm sure other companies that rely on process heat will be inspired by this to find efficiencies in their own operations.”

He says heat recovery like that used by Dominion Salt – capturing and re-using energy from waste heat – held immense potential to improve efficiency and returns for manufacturers.