Members Spotlight: Tetra Pak

Members Spotlight: How Tetra Pak's membrane filtration helped a Danish dairy cut freshwater intake by 143 m³ a day.

At Mammen Dairies in Denmark, a clean resource was disappearing into the drain. Whey protein concentration produced large volumes of demineralised water as a byproduct, with no system in place to capture it. Over a year, the loss reached millions of litres.

The dairy turned to Tetra Pak, an FMTE member, and installed a membrane filtration system with a built-in reverse osmosis polisher. Instead of being discharged, the surplus water is now purified to a standard clean enough to be reused for cleaning dairy equipment.

The benefits have stretched beyond water alone. By recovering demineralised process water on site, the dairy has cut its freshwater intake by 143 m³ a day, the equivalent of around 20 Olympic swimming pools a year. And because the whey by-product going out of the dairy is now more concentrated, fewer trucks are needed to transport it, cutting CO₂ emissions and saving 150 tonnes of diesel a year.

How the technology works

Tetra Pak's membrane filtration and reverse osmosis systems make it possible to save and repurpose millions of litres of water per year across food and beverage production. Reverse osmosis filters water for reuse in areas ranging from product processing to cleaning in place. Nanofiltration can also purify spent caustic solutions from cleaning processes, enabling large volumes of chemicals to be reused rather than sent to waste, with recovery rates of up to 70 to 90%.

Alongside water recovery, equipment like the Tetra Pak Homogenizer 500 is designed to use up to 80% less water and up to 70% less steam compared to conventional designs, through improved condensate barriers, serial cooling systems, and optimised cleaning controls.

Want to see how our members are driving sustainability in food manufacturing technologies? Visit our members page.

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