40% reduction in exposure to waste levies Contract savings of $420k between 2021 and 2024 Ongoing recycling savings of $288k + each following year
Why Organisations Need Us
Significant financial, environmental and brand gains are achieved when businesses manage and monitor their waste efficiently.
To combat our growing waste problem, the New Zealand government is increasing the levies on nonrecycled waste from $10 per tonne to $60 per tonne by 2024. Now more than ever, businesses need to reduce the amount of waste they send to landfill.
Our experienced waste consulting service team will help to navigate the often-complex waste management environment in Australasia.
How we help
Total Utilities provides a coordinated waste procurement, supplier management, monitoring and reporting service to many well-known New Zealand and Australasian brands.
We make sense of the options available, and know when and how to manage contracts,supplier engagement and multiple waste streams.
Major Client Wins
Case one: Increasing recycling and reusing behaviours
One of our big retail clients generates around 7,000 tonnes of waste each year. Until recently, most of this headed straight to landfill with minimal recycling or reuse. If they continued down this path the additional government levies and disposal tariffs could have added around $400,000 each year to their waste bill. Not to mention the damage to the environment and their brand’s reputation.
By engaging Total Utilities, the above customer:
managed their supplier and contracts effectively
gained significantly improved reporting and identified insights into their waste and waste behaviours
got their staff on board with new systems and policies
Reduced 40% of their waste levies through contract and performance efficiencies – and diverting waste from landfill by reusing and recycling
will save $420,000 between 2021 and 2024
after that they will save at least $288,000 p.a.
Case two: Waste mitigation and colloboration
We recently conducted a waste mitigation project in partnership with a well-known Australian firm, their supplier, and a specialist recycler. This partnership not only produced significant costs savings but allowed all parties to measure and monitor their results.
By engaging Total Utilities, the above customer:
standardised many previously disjointed supply and service arrangements
extended an existing major client contract
reduced their landfill usage, governance costs and costs to serve individual customer branches
reduced their waste charges and levies and improved their efficiency of supply.
Case three: Achieving long-term win/win contracts
Our client was about to negotiate a new contract with an existing waste supplier. Head Office in the meantime was facing increasing pressure to reduce costs and report on robust decarbonisation, recycling and waste diversion targets.
Total Utilities worked with the supplier to agree a win/win contract that included agreed targets and reporting. The supplier met these targets in the first half of the contract term, earning them the right to extend their contract for a much longer period, subject to continued performance.
As a result of this improved contact, the customer:
saw improved efficiency
faced much reduced waste charges
could see clear and measurable sustainability and decarbonisation outcomes
can now report their results to their Board, executives, shareholders, the market and government.
Total Utilities continues to work with all parties to provide ongoing improvement suggestions,
verifiable reporting on cost and consumption trends, and to ensure everyone complies with the
contracted billing and performance outcomes.
Successful outcomes for business, consumers and our planet
By working closely with our specialist waste consulting partners, suppliers and customers, Total Utilities improves the performance and efficiency of waste management, whilst negotiating the best possible contract terms. For our customers, this means reductions in their waste charges, levies and carbon footprint, improved monitoring and reporting of their waste systems, and less waste sent to landfill. We’re proud that as a result of these engagements businesses can reduce and reuse. These sustainable practices can be maintained long into the future for the benefit of current and future generations.
Keen for your business to enjoy the similar outcomes? Email us at [email protected]
As the southernmost commercial deep-water port in New Zealand, South Port NZ worked with Total Utilities to implement Centrica Business Solutions’ Panoramic Power™ technology – avoiding costly upgrade projects and increasing available storage capacity.
80% increase in container storage days compared to previous year
10mins to collect data from 51 revenue meters across site
$600k savings from avoided capital project expenses (USD)
Increasing capacity of available on-site storage
South Port NZ is a deep-water port on a 40-hectare Island located in Bluff, New Zealand, from where it provides a full range of marine services, cargo and container shipping, and on-site warehousing for domestic and international customers.
In 2019, South Port NZ partnered with Total Utilities to better understand the actual power demand of the site, identify opportunities to increase existing storage capacity and deliver customised solutions to meet the needs of customers on the island. An initial supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) solution was proposed by a 3rd party vendor to address the needs, which came with a price tag of NZD$800,000.
As a partner of Centrica Business Solutions, Total Utilities supplied and DECOM Electrical installed Panoramic Power wireless, device-level, energy monitoring sensors at the port. After a month of capturing the data and analysing it using Centrica Business Solutions’ complimentary energy management software, PowerRadar, South Port NZ deployed an additional 229 Panoramic Power sensors and over 30 communication bridges across the port with minimal interruption to operations. Within days, the on-site infrastructure team gained real-time, granular visibility into the energy consumption and operation of their critical assets across the site. The easy-to-install energy insights solution now transmits data securely via cellular connectivity – monitoring more assets than the initial proposed SCADA solution, at a fraction of the cost.
“PowerRadar provides real-time data on demand versus capacity which allows us to maximize our electrical PowerRadar provides real-time data on demand versus capacity which allows us to maximise our electrical infrastructure while minimising risk. Being a small team looking after the engineering infrastructure of a 40-hectare island, takes a lot of our time. Having something like this that provides us with real-time, easy data, provides efficiencies saving us a lot of time.”
Jason Paul, Project Engineer, South Port NZ
Prior to installing Panoramic Power, the infrastructure team had been unable to determine the maximum number of refrigeration storage units that could be brought online safely at any given time. As such, only eighty electrical plugs were available at any time – one per refrigeration storage unit – within two substations dedicated to handling refrigeration reefers for port customers. With real-time visibility of the measured load across the electrical substations in PowerRadar, the infrastructure team realised that the electrical capacity for these substations was being underutilised – adding more plugs to these substations doubled the reefer capacity to 160 without any major or costly upgrades.
Streamlining resources for managing assets
One of the hurdles of the day-to-day operations at the port was the amount of time spent in collecting data from submeters to invoice port customers. Typically, it would take one of the port’s personnel three days every six months to capture the readings from all 51 revenue meters around the port, regardless of the weather conditions. Using PowerRadar, it now takes them only 10 minutes to collect the meter information before it is passed to their finance team for invoicing customers.
With the monitoring of the sewer pump stations at the port using PowerRadar, the infrastructure team now receives real-time alerts on the status of the motors operated at those stations. This has enabled the reallocation of limited resources to other critical assets at the port. One of the benefits of such reallocation was the detection of surface water ingress at the pump stations by the infrastructure team, having compared the measured power draw of the pumps to available rain data. It is now possible for the infrastructure team to track the amount of surface water ingress at each station on days with rainfall and implement any corrective measures.
Effective planning for infrastructure projects
When trying to identify which assets at the port should be prioritised for capital upgrade projects, the infrastructure team relied on the energy consumption data in PowerRadar. This enabled the team, particularly in the design phase, to plan future expansions as well as ongoing maintenance of the existing electrical infrastructure at the port.
An energy audit was completed for one of the large electrical substations being monitored at the port. The findings resulted in the approval of a large capital project for implementing changes to the substation, and switch board running the Cold Stores and an expected payback within one year.
To ensure the reliability of the substations to handle loads within the port’s electrical network, especially during periods of storing a large number of refrigerator containers, the infrastructure team uses the real-time energy dashboard within PowerRadar to track the maximum power demand from the combined substations. If the power draw approaches 1 MW, the team can begin to consider bringing backup generators online or other ways of taking some load off the power grid at the port.
By choosing to implement Panoramic Power across the site, South Port NZ reduced their capital expenditure by US$600,000 and achieved an increase of 80% in container storage days compared to the previous year. In addition, South Port NZ is now able to report on their carbon footprint annually, provide automatic reports on monthly energy use to port users and streamline efforts in identifying areas of high energy usage for investigating ways to lower the peak demand at the port.
