Thursday November 01 2007

DISPATCH :: Green industrial plant
Patrick W. Rollens Associate Editor


BELOIT, Wisconsin | Four sunflower oil vats are bubbling merrily inside Kettle Foods’ new potato chip plant in Beloit, Wisconsin. Each vat is the size of a minivan and capable of cooking hundreds of freshly sliced potatoes in a single batch. Several times an hour, like clockwork, potatoes tumble through an overhead chute and into the automated food slicer, where the starchy roots are whittled into pale medallions for easy cooking. Then they’re dumped directly into the vats, where an attentive cook guides the chips through the cooking process.


According to Kettle, this process will yield more than 56,000 bags of potato chips each year in the 73,000 square foot plant. But the Beloit facility, which began operations in May and officially opened in September, draws minimal energy from the local electricity grid. Instead, 18 wind turbines mounted on the factory’s roof offset a portion of the energy required for operation.

The wind array is just one of the green design elements of the Kettle facility, which received Gold-level certification under the US Green Building Council’s LEED^® rating system, making it the first LEED^®-Gold industrial building in Wisconsin and one of just a few nationwide.

The story of Kettle’s new Wisconsin plant—its second in the US—is one of corporate citizenship and collaboration every step of the way. The Salem, Oregon-based potato chip company first visited the city several years ago during a reconnaissance trip—and found a willing partner in Larry Arft, Beloit’s city manager.

“When Kettle came to town, they were doing site selection work, but they were also looking for a home town,” Arft said at the September grand opening ceremony. “This company did more than just look at real estate and pick a piece of ground.”

Wisconsin’s Department of Commerce put together a $500,000 development loan for the new facility (which created about 100 jobs) and Beloit matched the financing with $510,000 in local incentives. With more than $1 million earmarked for Kettle—not to mention a superlative location close to potato farmers, labor and Chicago’s transportation infrastructure—the food service company made the decision to build the new plant in Beloit.

In keeping with the company’s environmental commitment, the decision was made at the outset to craft a green manufacturing facility. This edict was passed along to ACS Inc., a Madison-based contractor tasked with plotting the development of the facility.

Jim Corkery, president of ACS, said Kettle approached the project with unbridled enthusiasm—but no clear idea of how to proceed.

“What [Kettle] wanted was a LEED^®-Gold facility,” Corkery explains. “This was one of their key goals right out of the chute on the project. [But] they had no idea what to do to get it.”

ACS, which recently completed a LEED^®-certified Harley Davidson office building in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, introduced Kettle to a variety of green components and techniques.

In addition to the 18-windmill roof grid, the building also uses an efficient graywater system to recapture the 1.65 million gallons of water used annually to wash potatoes. Additionally, 100 percent of the used cooking oil from the fryers will be collected and refined into biodiesel. The factory boasts enough available space to effectively double its output capacity as Kettle grows its market presence in the eastern United States.

Among the more difficult points to achieve involved daylighting and outside views for employees. LEED^® offers a credit if 90 percent of the employees have views outside, says Corkery, but that’s quite difficult in an industrial building where companies want as few windows as possible.

“You wouldn’t be focused on providing those views,” Corkery says. “But Kettle, as a client, was extremely focused on their employees.”

During the development, ACS’ initial plan came in over-budget, and Kettle sought ways to improve the bottom line. But throughout the value-engineering phase, the company never discussed removing the facility’s numerous windows and skylights.

Moreover, Kettle took the superlative step of installing an attractive, rustic cafeteria (well-stocked with bags and bags of potato chips) on the southwest corner of the plan. At the September grand opening, Kettle President Tim Fallon referred to the cafeteria as a gift to the workers.

“We really felt that this is the best piece of real estate on the property, and we’ve given it to the employees as their lunchroom,” he said.

Kettle’s commitment to their employees—even at the expense of the construction budget—netted the building the coveted LEED^® credit for outside views.

Even the surrounding property got a green touch, courtesy of Tallgrass Restoration, an environmental landscape company with offices in Schaumburg, Illinois and Milton, Wisconsin. Tallgrass specializes in prairie restoration, and the firm’s engineers cultivated five acres of native weeds and grasses around the Kettle facility to create a stable landscape solution for property.

There were a few speedbumps, and Corkery can point to one big issue that required significant investment: in late July, the initial USGBC application review certified that the project had only acquired 38 credits. Gold-level certification requires a minimum of 39.

With deadlines looming, the ACS crew rushed an expedited application through the system, essentially shelling out $2,000 for the opportunity to prove they had earned the sufficient number of LEED^® points.

The last-ditch effort worked, and the Kettle building ultimately scored 40 points on the LEED^® scale.

Looking back, ACS’s Corkery marvels at the speedy design/build process. Thirteen months after the kickoff meeting, the facility was producing chips. That was May; the official ceremony wasn’t until September. He attributes the fast turnaround to the fact that ACS was involved in all aspects of the project.

“When we’re managing both the design and construction, we can overlap a lot of activities and provide projects to an owner in a very short timeframe.”