Across the Group, our companies are committed to achieving innovation with integrity.
Traditionally, industrial white salt products are manufactured using a high-energy vacuum process to produce a high purity (PDV) salt product. This is still the premium salt used in many food and commercial applications today.
Since the 1970s, Wilson Salt has provided a range of high-quality salt products using sea salt, for use in a variety of commercial applications. Sea salt is manufactured by using the natural power of the sun rather than industrial drying techniques which are used to produce vacuum salt products. Both products have similar purity levels, but sea salt products demonstrates a dramatically lower carbon footprint. Our sea salt products are now best value and dominant commercial salt products sold to industry throughout Ireland.
Clinty Regen introduced the recycling of aerospace sector aluminium wastes to Europe on a commercial scale and, on its establishment in 1998, was only the second such plant in the world. The company uses an award-winning process to simplify the chemi-milling of aerospace skins and parts, whilst virtually eliminating chemical usage and disposal.
Our Regen System removes dissolved aluminium from the etchant solution at a rate that matches the amount dissolved within the etchant bath. As a result, it dramatically reduces the need for bath replenishment and the costly disposal of large volumes of etchant liquor. The recycled aluminium produced by the Regen system is then recycled as a raw material to make effluent treatment products by its sister company Clinty Chemicals.
Clinty Regen’s project with Bombardier Aerospace won the Green Apple Award in 1999, for their efforts in reducing chemical usage and disposal by 90%, whilst improving plant throughput and capacity by 300% at a marginal capital cost.
Since 1978 Clinty Chemicals has supplied to customers in Ireland and the UK in a partnership with the Stevenson family, Ballymena. We examine all levels of the water treatment life cycle, from the broader environmental impact of production to the regeneration and recycling of the product used.
Innovations from Clinty Chemicals include:
(1) Ferric Aluminium Sulphate (FAS) – used to treat potable water, wastewater and industrial effluents – is an original and unique inorganic blend of aluminium and ferric salts, originally produced from naturally occurring laterite ore from the Antrim plateau. By using locally mined ore as a substitute for imports, the company delivers lower cost and substantially reduced environmental impact.
(2) Purafloc – Developed in 2015, has proven to be one of the only products shown to reliably reduce MCPA (pesticide) levels to meet EU water standards.
(3) Nanofloc – improves effluent treatment efficiency to such a high degree that effluent plants can often achieve much greater throughput than existing treatment plants.
Clinty Laboratories offers independent laboratory testing to exceptionally high standards for water, waste, soil, and fuel analysis. At purpose-built facilities in Belfast Harbour, our highly experienced team uses state-of-the-art laboratory equipment to ensure optimum service and cost-effective technical analysis for our customers.
Able to test and analyse water, waste, and other substrates – and with the only laboratory in Ireland providing waste-derived fuel analysis – we are an essential hub for environmental, commercial waste, and industrial processing industries which require time sensitive and stringent analytical testing.
As part of the Group’s commitment to sustainable business, Wilson Renewables invests in clean, carbon-offset technologies. In 2016, we installed two 150kw wind turbines at the Wilson Farm in Whitehead, Co. Antrim. The following year, we commissioned two 50kw biomass boilers at our Clinty Chemicals site in Ballymena. In 2022, we are installing 294kw photovoltaic cells at Wilson Salt.