Henkel AG & Co. (Düsseldorf, Germany; www.henkel.com) has announced Project Xina, a €27-million expansion project named for a volcano near its Toluca production site in Mexico. Project Xina will simultaneously double the capacity and reduce the environmental impact of Henkel’s largest detergent production site in Latin America.
Project Xina will modernize technologies, double the production area, and make logistics more efficient. Several upgrades completed in 2014 are already reducing the plant’s environmental footprint. For example, a new heat recovery system was installed to save energy. The new system uses waste heat from a sulfonation plant to preheat the air for spray-drying powder detergents.
Henkel also introduced a two-step reverse osmosis process to reduce wastewater from liquid detergent production and increase the yield of recycled water. With the first measures in place, annual energy consumption has decreased by 13% per ton of product, water consumption has decreased by 14% per ton of product, and waste generation has decreased by 19% per ton of product. The expansion has taken place without disrupting ongoing production and without a single lost-time accident – an accident causing an employee to miss work – in 2014. Additional efficiency gains are expected once all measures are fully implemented in 2015.
Once the project is complete, Toluca will be Henkel’s largest detergent production site outside of Henkel’s Düsseldorf headquarters and will enable it to produce powder and liquid detergents efficiently for the fast-growing Latin American market.