​​New jobs at Birkenhead chemical manufacturer

A manufacturer of environmentally friendly household cleaning products has created new jobs and is forecasting significant growth, after investing in new technology with the support of Made Smarter.

Organica UK, based in Birkenhead, makes products such as washing-up liquid, laundry detergents, fabric conditioner, and cleaning sprays for leading supermarket brands.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the business has experienced a growing demand for its products and needed to increase production capacity, and improve how it manages resources.

Working with Made Smarter, it invested in two data-driven technology projects.

The first used Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) sensors to capture  the volumes of ingredients going into and coming out of its blending tanks, the number of bottles being filled, capped and labelled on the filling lines, and the number of boxes on the packaging lines.

By introducing real-time monitoring and analytics Organica was able to make data-driven decisions which increased productivity by 20%, reduced energy consumption by 10% and reduced waste by 20%.

It laid the foundations for a second project to adopt a bespoke, cloud-based ERP solution to improve how it keeps track of orders, production and stock.

Organica forecasts that it will make its production processes 25% more efficient, reducing energy consumption by 10% per ton of product and reducing waste by up to 20%.

The business has now created eight new jobs and is expected to increase turnover from £5m to £8m.

Noel Doyle, Technical Director, said: “We have always been proactive and positive about the challenges and opportunities in digitalising, but Made Smarter support has enabled us to really hone our vision.

“We have created a digital roadmap, brought in new skills, and fast-tracked our adoption of the right technologies we need to overcome our challenges and barriers to growth. We are now able to monitor and manage production on a scale that has so far not been possible.”

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