As one of Aurecon’s inaugural Design Directors I am passionate about finding new ways to help our manufacturing clients meet their ever increasing need to be price competitive in an environmentally sustainable way. Finding innovative ways to manage raw materials and energy sources can make a difference to improving profits and the environment.
For more than 40 years I have specialised in advising on and managing projects and operational improvements across the dairy, food, fish, minerals, forestry, pharmaceutical and chemical industries. Many of these projects have included feasibility studies to assess process requirements, capital and operating costs, and project viability. By asking the right questions my teams and I have investigated, developed and implemented innovative new processes which have delivered cost efficient plant solutions and improvements to factory operations.
I previously worked for multinational companies such as Monsanto and was a founding director of a medium-sized consulting engineering practice for over 20 years. My interests lie in developing new processes and managing projects through pilot trials to full scale implementation.
One of the projects I’m proudest of was successfully commissioning the Inhaler Grade Lactose plant for Fonterra Co-operative Group, knowing that this plant would be only one of two in the world to manufacture US FDA (Food & Drug Administration) approved inhaler grade lactose to help asthmatics.
A very different challenge was finding a way to increase pharmaceutical and food grade salt production by 50 percent without using any more energy at the Dominion Salt Ltd, Mount Maunganui plant. By designing an extension to the existing salt crystallizing evaporator we significantly improved steam efficiency and the unit cost of production while helping our client meet its production targets and maintain operation throughout the construction of the modified plant until the final connections were installed.
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