Springfield: Leading our Facilities in Reducing Water

McCormick’s factory in Springfield, Missouri processes condiments and sauces, and has the largest water footprint of our North American facilities. It therefore provided one of the biggest opportunities for water reduction. Greg McNabb, Engineering/Maintenance Manager, Kevin Collins, Project Engineer and Kristi Weaver, Process Control Engineer, have been managing the implementation of water reduction projects at the plant.

 In 2023, the team installed meters on multiple lines and pieces of equipment, enabling them to track data, quickly identify issues and implement solutions to reduce water usage. Through our partnership with Ecolab and their Total Plant Assessment (TPA) of the site’s water usage, we identified a significant opportunity. 

“We have four cooling towers,” explained Greg, “and one of them had a leak underneath, which was challenging to spot because it ran into our roof drain.” Once we fixed the issue, we saw a significant decrease in water usage. A meter has now been installed on the equipment with alarms that alert the team if excess water is being used.

The Engineering and Maintenance Team was given water efficiency objectives in their annual performance goals. They began tackling projects which were seen as low-hanging fruit, such as a minor leak from a sink, and identified a number of capital investments required. The investments are paying off with both cost savings and millions of gallons of water being reduced every year. “Our water reduction for 2023 increased more than 4% from the previous year.” stated Greg.

The Ecolab team has helped identify some projects which we expect to have significant impact in the future on reducing our water usage. “We’re bringing on board a new cooling tower for an air compressor project that Kevin has been working on with Ecolab,” explained Greg. “We expect a three million gallons a year saving” added Kevin.

Understanding the need to engage all Springfield employees, a user-friendly water savings calculator was developed which Kristi’s team utilizes to investigate opportunities and implement water savings projects. “It can be used by various departments and lays out the savings of small to large leaks and projects in a simple way that increases the appreciation of what we are doing.” explained Kristi. Individuals that fix a leak can put their data in and immediately see the savings impact. “It really highlights that one person can make a difference” she explained.

As TPAs are completed at each of our sites, our hope is that the progress of the Springfield facility will provide a roadmap for other factories to implement water saving activities, enabling us to accelerate our progress towards achieving our goal of a 25% reduction in water usage by 2030.

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