It will contribute significantly to Arla’s overall goal to reduce CO2 emissions from production by 63 per cent by 2030
Arla Foods Ingredients is taking a major step towards its carbon reduction goals by constructing an electric heat pump facility at its primary processing plant in Denmark. The EUR 32 million project is Arla’s largest investment in net-zero initiatives. Scheduled to go live in 2025, the facility at the Danmark Protein site will be able to convert 2.8MW of electricity into 8MW of heat. The shift to heat production by electricity instead of gas will cut the site’s greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 14,500 tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year – a 17 per cent reduction compared to 2015.
As such, it will contribute significantly to Arla’s overall goal to reduce CO2 emissions from production by 63 per cent by 2030. Along with measures to reach a target of 100 per cent renewable electricity across its European sites by the end of 2025, it is one of the biggest steps the company has taken towards net zero.
The investment is the culmination of many years of work at Arla Foods Ingredients, which has a long history of applying electrification technology. Lessons learned from smaller heat pump investments have informed the design of the fully integrated system, which will capture energy from chilled water. The resulting heat will be fed into the plant’s 90°C heat distribution network, which supplies hot water for processes such as spray-drying to create powdered whey ingredients.