Keep an open mind!
Oy Soya Ab’s tofu production plant is situated in Tammisaari, southern Finland. Soya’s business is to provide consumers with pure and healthy food made from the best vegetable-based ingredients through natural production processes. The company focuses mainly on nearby markets like the Nordic countries, Baltic region as well as the city of Saint Petersburg in Russia.
A material audit based on Motiva’s model was carried out at the plant, concentrating on tofu production. The essential challenges were to analyse the costs and material flows of the production process, and to find concrete savings. The insights gained from the exercise proved so valuable to Soya that it recommends material audits for other small and medium sized businesses.
Companies wishing to carry out such audits should gather detailed data on their processes, and keep an open mind about the outcomes. Auditing by an outside expert is proactive and systematic, and can save a company time and effort trying to do it all internally.
Key benefits
"The material audit was successful. It helped us to create savings, to see our operations from new angles and to target our resources to right points needing development. In future the major part of our biowaste flows can be reprocessed into natural fertiliser in bioreactor beside the plant." - Jouko Riihimäki, Director, Soya
Motiva's material audit model, https://www.motiva.fi/en/private_sector/energy_and_material_audits
Motiva. Oy Soya Ab case study (in Finnish) https://www.motiva.fi/files/12332/Motiva-materiaalikatselmus_Oy_Soya_Ab.pdf