Sita UK, one of Britain’s largest recycling and waste management companies, is upgrading its depot diesel fuelling facilities to meet the latest environmental standards for the storage of fuel-oil.

New installations have been completed in Sittingbourne, Kent and Barking, Essex. A third depot in Crawley has been re-equipped with new pumps and monitoring systems.

St Albans-based Fuel Installation Services is the lead contractor, working in conjunction with MIS Fuel Monitoring of Wolverhampton. Each tank installation is delivered as a complete package equipped with Merridale heavy duty commercial pumps and an integrated Auditor control unit.

Installation is basically the provision of mains electric and a data link to the site office. In operation details of all fuelling transactions are recorded and downloaded, as required, for processing by the Merridale FuelFX management software.

According to Kevin Smythe, depot manager at Sittingbourne, the new installations have introduced standardisation which could provide the basis for a more corporate approach in the future.

“Currently fuelling is the responsibility of individual depots. The way our group has developed has resulted in various different methods or systems, which then created difficulties because of a lack of consistency.

“Visiting drivers were able to draw fuel from depots and this resulted in large amounts of accrued costs which had to be reconciled several months after the transactions had been completed.”

As an interim measure it was decided to issue all drivers with fuel cards. While this allowed better control, it was more expensive to administer. To reduce its operating costs, the Sittingbourne depot took the lead in returning to depot fuelling.

“The Merridale Auditor system provides a record of every fuelling transaction. As well as ensuring that all transactions are properly authorised, we are also benefiting from a more accurate analysis of our fuel costs, mpg performance and from this any issues relating to the vehicles,” says Smythe.

Sita operates a variety of vehicle types for refuse collection, skip operations and recycling – all of which are on specific cost centres. Drivers use a smart key to access the pump. These keys are clustered into groups of vehicles, enabling the management system to identify the relevant cost centres for different types of vehicles.

Sita’s Riverside Depot in Barking, Essex is one of the group’s largest regional depots covering a full range of services, including commercial waste, security shredding, recycling and transfer. The fuelling point has two diesel dispensers and a 50,000 litres capacity tank, serving around fifty vehicles. The installation also includes a separate 10,000 litres tank for gas-oil used by fork lift trucks.


MIS Fuel Monitoring

www.merridale.co.uk

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