Grain Drying Case Study - Newnham Farm

Pressure is increasing on the UK farming community to exercise ever tighter control on production methods. In order to meet the stringent demands of supermarkets and other food retailers and processors. For years, Calor provided a clean, efficient and controllable fuel supply to meet the needs of poultry, pig and game rearers. Similarly, in an effort to provide taint-free crops which have been dried to the optimum moisture content, an increasing number of farmers now rely on Calor to provide the power to dry crops, from wheat and barley to oats and hops.

The brewing industry, in particular, makes heavy demands on farmers to supply vast quantities of high quality hops for use in the brewing of beer: a specialist crop grown in only a few locations in the UK. Newnham Farms, established in 1994, had dedicated 180 of the farm's 418 acres to the cultivation of hops, hardy perennial plants requiring high levels of routine husbandry, but which can continue to produce hops for more than twenty years. The farm, based near Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire, employs six full-time staff who are joined by more than forty others during four to five week harvest period in the late summer. After thorough drying, the final product is then supplied to many major breweries and a high proportion of regional breweries.

At Newnham Farms, hop harvesting begins in late August and runs throughout September. As farm manager Richard Powell explained, this period is absolutely critical: "During the harvest, the pickers worked seven days a week for the whole month. Once ripe, hops mature very quickly and our staff have to work long shifts, every day of the week, in order to bring the crop in at the optimum time. The breweries require a high level of consistency in the hops they use for brewing, which in turn gives us a very limited time to gather the crop."

Consequently, the process of drying the hops, after they have been picked, must be tightly controlled and as efficient as possible, and keep up with the quantity of crop being harvested. For help in this, Newnham Farms turned to Calor.

Prior to 1997, Newnham Farms used kilns linked to a single tank of LPG, supplying power through three individual vaporisers. Unfortunately, this method could not consistently and reliably meet the considerable demand from the burners. In 1997, at the request of Richard Powell, Calor applied its extensive technical expertise to identifying the problem and providing the solution: two 18-tonne Calor gas tanks, linked together, from which fuel is drawn and piped to three 9-million BTU burners almost constantly during the four-to-five-week drying period.

According to Richard Powell, control over both temperature and length of time in the kilns is crucial when drying hops. "Each kiln of hops requires around 8 hours of drying, depending on its variety and the weather conditions at the time of harvest. The hops are loaded onto a perforated floor, and heat is introduced as soon as the kiln is full. We start the drying process at around 120 degrees Fahrenheit for 2 hours, increasing the heat to 140 degrees Fahrenheit for the remaining six hours. Thanks to the control we now have over the supply of gas to heat the kilns, the whole process works extremely smoothly.

"Calor was chosen for its expertise, extensive support services, and its ability to fulfil our very specialised demands. There are a number of benefits of using Calor, including the supply of sufficient gas within the very specific time frames we require, and the company's generally very helpful approach."

Calor has been closely involved with agriculture for over sixty years, and is the market leader in the supply of bottled and bulk LPG (liquefied petroleum gas). Its success in supplying the power for appliances across nearly every agricultural sector, form poultry raring to grain drying, is attributable in no small part to the clean-burning qualities of the fuel and the ready availability of Calor gas - no matter where in the country a customer may be.

As Richard Powell agrees: "Calor not only provides the level of heat we require over a very intensive period of time, it also burns very cleanly, resulting in a much lower risk of tainting the crop. In addition, it burns very efficiently, which helps to reduce the servicing and maintenance requirement of our equipment. Although we currently only dry our own hops, we are so pleased with the operation that we are considering expanding the range of crops we dry to include others in the future."