First LEED-Certified Frozen-Food Plant

This past January, Contessa Premium Foods opened what the company says is the world’s first energy efficient frozen food plant.

Located on the Los Angeles harbor, Contessa’s $40 million Green Cuisine plant reduces carbon-dioxide emissions by a ton a day, while producing up to 150 million pounds of product in its first year of operation–a significant achievement in an industry known for high energy use. 

The food industry is the fifth largest consumer of energy in the manufacturing arena. Each year, in the U.S. alone, food manufacturers produce more than 105 million tons of carbon-dioxide emissions. 

Contessa President and CEO John Z. Blazevich spent $6 million to make the new plant "green" and collaborating with the United States Green Building Counsel to achieve the first-ever LEED certification for a frozen food plant.

The company had to overcome the challenge of designing an energy-efficient, 4-million-cubic-foot facility that’s almost entirely temperature controlled–at a maximum of 40 degrees and a minimum of zero.

"Strictly in terms of cubic feet, it’s similar to running 200,000 refrigerators in the same place, at the same time," said Blazevich. "So it took careful planning and innovative thinking to design our Green Cuisine plant in a way that significantly minimizes energy use."

Engineering team developed first-to-market innovations, such as a heat-redirection system that captures waste heat produced by superheated refrigerant gases as they leave refrigeration compressors. These gases are redirected to a heat exchanger, condensed into liquid form, and then used to heat water in a circulation system.

Other energy-saving features include:

• A solar-power array that reduces carbon dioxide emissions by more than 730,000 pounds each year.
• An innovative loading dock that prevents the loss of refrigerated air, reducing temperature fluctuation and energy use.
• Variable frequency drives that adjust the amount of power supplied to motors at specific times or under specific conditions to keep energy use to a minimum.