Arla in Vimmerby has entered a collaboration with the energy company Adven. This means that the facility will become fossil-free, simultaneously reducing energy consumption by 40 percent.
– This shows what good collaboration achieves, sustainability in multiple dimensions, says Victoria Olsson, Arla Sweden’s Sustainability Manager in a press release.
Some of Arla’s dairies are already fossil-free, such as the fresh milk dairy in Stockholm. The energy-intensive milk powder plants have been more challenging, but Visby succeeded in 2021, and now it’s Vimmerby’s turn.
In 2021 Arla and Adven initiated a partnership to make the larger facility in Vimmerby fossil-free as well. Now, the final parts of Vimmerby’s new energy system are installed. When the testing is completed, Sweden will have the first two fossil-free powder plants in the cooperative.
The efficiency improvement in Vimmerby represents Arla’s largest individual energy saving effort to date. Consumption decreases by 40 percent, saving about 50,000 megawatt-hours per year.
– In large facilities, significant savings occur when we make the most of every drop of milk and every energy hour, explains Allan Leandersson, Arla’s project manager in Vimmerby.
Adven and Arla’s energy solution in Vimmerby consists of various components: an upgraded bio boiler, flue gas condensation, and heat recovery at multiple stages. The crowning achievement is the RO (reverse osmosis) system, which essentially ”filters” the water out of the milk. The result is an optimization of the milk flow, allowing Arla Vimmerby to increase its capacity by 20 percent without expansion.
When hen the new energy system is fully operational, CO2 emissions are expected to decrease by at least 67 percent, likely 70 percent.
Read the full press release HERE