Sheffield Teaching Hospitals (STH) has invested in a £10million-plus project that will ultimately see one Central Production Unit (CPU) preparing thousands of meals a day for the patients, members of staff and visitors at all five hospitals in the Group.

The project resulted in a completely redesigned post-cooking area that was much slicker and more efficient. This was achieved through a series of interlocking coldrooms designed for ease of use. For example the salad coldroom leading through to the salad washroom, which in turn links to the salad and sandwich prep room. This flexible design allows the dietary requirements of staff, patients and visitors to be easily catered for.

One of the most innovative sustainable features of the project is the heat exchange system that recycles waste heat from the refrigeration and uses is to pre-heat the CPU’s incoming hot water supply.

As well as saving energy, the process should lengthen the life of the refrigeration. This is because, in passing through the heat exchanger, the refrigerant gas loses heat, so the refrigeration system doesn’t have to work as hard to cool it down.

Williams Refrigeration also installed custom made 60-minute fire doors on all pass-through blast chillers and freezers.

As well as these pioneering features all equipment includes the standard greenlogic technology found in all Williams equipment such as automatic defrost on the blast chillers, energy efficient high velocity fans and a large surface area evaporator offering advanced airflow