EATON Socon-based pharmaceuticals company Tillomed Laboratories Limited was this week held up as an example of how companies can benefit from a new �2.1million scheme to help businesses in the East use resources more efficiently and boost profits. The new

EATON Socon-based pharmaceuticals company Tillomed Laboratories Limited was this week held up as an example of how companies can benefit from a new �2.1million scheme to help businesses in the East use resources more efficiently and boost profits.

The new service has already helped over 100 companies to identify opportunities to become more efficient, providing them with a free two-day review to find out the best way to cut costs through reducing the use of water, energy and materials, not-for-profit promoter Renewables East said.

Through a variety of initiatives Tillomed Laboratories, one of the largest independent packaging and sales pharmaceutical companies in the UK, has reduced the amount of waste it sends to landfill by 50 per cent, a reduction of more than 10,000kg a year. The savings made by recycling cardboard boxes alone amounts to �5,700 a year, and the company saves around �1,200 a year by reusing clean bubble-wrap.

It is all quite straightforward, the company explained. Cardboard boxes used to package incoming goods are used to package outgoing finished product. Waste bubble-wrap and pallet wrap is cut up and used to pack outbound delivery boxes.

Even the timber packaging in which new machinery arrives, and timber from forklift truck pallets, is reclaimed and has been used to build a bicycle storage area for staff cycles and an outside storage area.

Energy use has been significantly reduced through an aggressive preventive maintenance programme aimed at keeping all machinery running as energy-efficiently as possible.

Production manager Jeff Wysocki said: "My advice to any company that has not yet looked at resource efficiency, recycling and reduction of resources is to do it, because the savings are there to be made and it makes financial sense."

The support includes advice and interest-free loans which may be more than repaid by the savings they generate, Renewables East says.