High-quality reuse
What is high-quality reuse?
The brewing and malting process has a special category of residual flows, namely co-products. Examples include brewer's grains, packaging material and sludge from water purification. We reuse these co-products, aiming to add as much value as possible and thereby bring them back as high as possible in the chain. We also look at our machines and buildings, which we don't want to just demolish.
High-quality reuse therefore means that we want to keep the organic flows in the food chain and reuse or recycle packaging material, machines and buildings as much as possible. We are continuously looking for ways to reuse our co-products and bring them back into the chain as high-quality as possible.
How do we organise high-quality reuse?
In order to be able to reuse materials and raw materials in a high-quality manner, we first ensure that all these streams are collected separately. We distinguish four main groups for this purpose:
- Co-products (e.g. dregs, yeast and malt pellets)
- Residual flows (e.g. packaging material)
- Residual water
- Machinery and buildings
We have established circular criteria for each group. The co-products must be sold as animal feed as a minimum requirement. In addition, we strive for application in human nutrition (e.g. in bread or biscuits). For residual flows, machines and buildings, we aim first and foremost for reuse. If this is not possible, we will look at recycling.
High-quality reuse initiatives
- Our brewer's grain is used as animal feed.
- We are working on a pilot to transform brewer's grains into a high-quality ingredient for the bakery industry.
- Our residual water in Lieshout and Ethiopia is reused by farmers in the area in the Boer Bier Water project.
- Our yeast in Ethiopia is used as animal feed.
- All locations with their own water treatment plant extract biogas from the waste water. In total, this is sufficient gas for approximately 400 households.
