Biomass boiler lays foundation for carbon neutrality

The €17.5m boiler, which is to be installed at the company’s Nutricia spray drying plant in Balclutha, on the country’s South Island, is the first stage of Danone’s plans to make the facility entirely carbon neutral by 2021.

The Balclutha plant processes raw milk sourced from 18 local farms into a powder that is used as the base for the production of its Infant Milk Formula (IMF) brands, including Aptamil and Karicare.

Finance agreement triggers world’s largest biomass power project

Spray drying plants convert milk into a dry powder using heat from a boiler. As a result, around 85 per cent of the plant’s energy consumption comes from steam production.

The new biomass facility will replace the gas or coal typically used as an energy source in boilers with sustainable, locally-sourced wood fuels, according to Cyril Marniquet, Danone’s New Zealand operations director.

‘Biomass’ is energy from plants or plant by-products, in which solar energy is captured and stored via the process of photosynthesis. When biomass is burned, it releases CO₂ and other by-products, but this is largely offset by the CO₂ which is absorbed in the growth of the plant.