Celebrating World Quality Week 2025: The Role of Ice Pigging in Driving Excellence

What is Ice Pigging?

If you’ve never heard of Ice Pigging you’re not alone. It’s a fairly modern pipe-cleaning technology which uses a thick slurry of ice crystals to clean pipelines.

Unlike traditional mechanical pigs or chemical cleaning methods, Ice Pigging is a non-abrasive method which saves water, time and money, and is low risk. 

It involves pumping ice slurry into a pipeline, which scrapes away built-up sediments and biofilm without causing any damage, depositing the contaminated waste before being safely flushed through with water.

How is Ice Pigging A Quality Service?

At Nivalis we pride ourselves on delivering a quality service to all our customers. 

Working in a range of industries, from the defence sector to pharmaceutical factories, we implement our innovative technology in a range of settings. This can be challenging at times but we work closely with our customers to ensure that each and every detail of the operation is planned concisely to ensure the Ice Pigging work can be carried out to the highest standard possible. 

There are three main business branches at Nivalis, each with its own quality-critical path that ensures all requirements are met. Examples include:

• New equipment design and build: 

  During this process it is crucial to establish customer quality requirements to ensure that the equipment is fit for purpose. This includes controlling materials of construction, performing very strict FAT (Factory Acceptance Test) and SAT (Site Acceptance Test) procedures following final handover, all which is documented through quality-controlled records.

• Ice Pigging as a service (we use our machines to travel to customers and perform Ice Pigging): 

  Every customer application is unique, with different system designs and specific issues to resolve. The process which we follow is tailored to each application, with quality measures applied at every step: site surveys, any additional chemical treatment of Nivalis equipment, effective Ice Pigging execution, and detailed reporting. 

  Each stage is fully documented to ensure compliance and to maintain quality standards for the entire process.

• Nivalis equipment rental (our equipment is rented to customers): 

  This process also requires a tailored approach. Machines are tested prior to travel and again at the customer site to ensure full functionality. Nivalis support is provided to ensure the customer understands the equipment’s limitations and advantages, helping them maximise the benefits of Ice Pigging during the rental period

These are only a few examples - there is much more involved in each step, as well as other activities which we carry out but this gives an overview of how quality is at the heart of all we do.

Ice Pigging - Committed to Improvement

Delivering a service like Ice Pigging in a variety of locations worldwide and often under intense timeframes means that we are always learning and improving. 

Part of our ethos as a company is to be innovative. We have the innovative technology, but we are always looking for ways to improve, grow and develop inline with the rest of the industry and the world. 

Our Project Engineer and Quality Lead, Wojciech Kocaja gives a great example of this:

“I am currently working to achieve a fully documented validation process for Ice Pigging, in combination with sanitisation methods for biofilm remediation. 

This is highly quality-driven innovation, as the goal is to produce scientific evidence while documenting every stage through:

• A validation plan
• A sampling plan
• A final report/case study

This process will provide customers with quality assurance of Ice Pigging’s effectiveness.

Additionally, almost every Ice Pigging application involves some degree of innovation. Each customer’s system is different, requiring us to adapt equipment and processes to meet their specific requirements, while ensuring that quality remains central.”

World Quality Week and the Future

On World Quality Week, we celebrate the people, technologies, and practices that ensure safe, reliable, and sustainable services. 

Ice pigging is more than just a pipe-cleaning method—it is a symbol of how innovative thinking can deliver quality, efficiency, and sustainability in one solution.

As industries look ahead to a more competitive and cost-demanding future, embracing solutions like Ice Pigging will be essential to meeting the challenges while keeping quality at the heart of their operations.

As Wojciech says: 

“Reliability and reputation lay the foundation, quality holds the structure firm.”

At Nivalis we build every service on this principle so we are more than ready.