HP Hood LLC, Lynnfield, Mass., said its Agawam, Mass., plant received the first-ever Energy Star certification given to a fluid dairy processing plant by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), receiving a perfect score. HP Hood said the award highlights the company’s innovation in sustainability, water reduction and efficient use of energy. It also indicates that the plant is in the top tier of the most efficient plants across the nation, spending less on energy and resulting in lower energy-related impacts than all other comparable plants.

“Plant Manager David Laden and the entire Agawam team embody the company’s dedication to sustainability,” said Mike Suever, senior vice president of milk procurement at HP Hood. “They really stepped up to the plate and went above and beyond to ensure Hood remains an industry leader in energy and water use reduction.”

Energy Star was introduced by EPA in 1992 as a voluntary market-based partnership to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through energy-efficiency. Every year, the award is presented to dairy plants that have a distinguished mark of energy-efficiency and achieve the highest score on the EPA Energy Star performance scale known as the Energy Performance Indicator (EPI). The EPI score enables a plant to compare its energy performance to similar plants, HP Hood said.

The award was presented to Laden at an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. last week.

“The Agawam plant is doing an outstanding job of managing energy, enabling the facility to be one of the most energy-efficient fluid milk processing plants in the U.S.” said Walt Tunnessen, Energy Star industrial program manager. “It now joins an elite group of U.S. manufacturing plants that have earned Energy Star certification for best-in-class energy performance.”

To learn more about HP Hood in New England and its continued efforts to conserve energy, visit Hood.com.