ON THE BOIL FOR 75 YEARS
John Thompson, universally known in SA for its boiler installations, is celebrating its 75th anniversary of service to the SA industry this year.
It was founded with an office in Johannesburg in 1935. From the start, the food and beverage processing industry has always been an important category of customers for John Thompson.
John Thompson designs both locally and in association with overseas technology partners, manufactures, constructs and maintains industrial water tube and fire tube boilers, and maintains and services utility boilers and environmental equipment.
The company, now also a division of ACTOM, has a huge installed base of boilers throughout the food and beverage processing industry.
Theo Lotter, divisional director of John Thompson, says that there have been huge changes in boilers since 1935, and the company does continuous product development.
Probably the most important development recently, he says, has been to develop boilers which can change fuels – as the cost of different fuels make one or other more advantageous. Thus boilers produced by John Thompson can use electricity, coal, oil, gas, waste wood, other waste products, etc.
Currently, says Lotter, the biggest trend appears to be into renewable fuels. Lotter says John Thompson receives enquiries for clean and renewable fuel solutions on a daily basis.
With the impending Eskom electricity tariff hikes, as well as possible shortages of electricity, John Thompson is also increasingly receiving enquiries for low-pressure turbine units, associated with boilers, which generate electricity (usually, 1MW or 2MW).
These requests emanate both from companies in SA and in countries north of SA.
Lotter says there is considerable potential for food companies to use biomass for both boiler and electricity generation projects. This is already taking place, and increasing, in the sugar industry, where John Thompson is the leading provider of technology and installations.
An extension to this category of technology is the use of biogas digesters to extend the benefit of the biomass.
Lotter says that although many companies which have large electric boilers have secured long term contracts incorporating favourable tariffs with Eskom, those companies will need to plan to replace their electric boilers with other types of boilers when the contracts expire, because they cannot expect the same tariffs in the future.
He does not recommend the installation of electric boilers because of the certainty of much higher electricity tariffs, and the fact that SA is running out of electricity capacity.
Copied from "Food & Beverage Reporter"
