Consistent investment in sustainable process flows

With imme­di­ate effect, the Rittmay­er brew­ery in Upper Fran­co­nia is com­mis­sion­ing a mix­ing and equal­iza­tion tank and its own waste­water treat­ment plant, invest­ing almost one mil­lion euros in the process. Both the tank and the waste­water treat­ment plant are cen­tral com­po­nents of a holis­tic waste­water treat­ment sys­tem in the brew­ery’s pro­duc­tion process and sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­ple­ment the exist­ing eco­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic mea­sures. In the first step, the mix­ing and equal­iza­tion tank is used for waste­water pre­treat­ment in the brew­ing process, while the waste­water treat­ment plant takes over so-called anaer­o­bic waste­water treatment.

Both ele­ments make it pos­si­ble to reduce the organ­ic load in the waste­water by around 80 per­cent to the lev­el of house­hold waste­water. At the same time, a local­ly oper­at­ed gas stor­age facil­i­ty is fed by the waste­water treat­ment plant, sup­ply­ing bio­methane for the com­bined heat and pow­er plant to gen­er­ate green elec­tric­i­ty and heat for the plant. The brew­ery is thus con­tin­u­ing its focus on a con­sis­tent­ly sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion process and tak­ing on a pio­neer­ing role for oth­er brew­eries in the region.

“We are very pleased to be able to fur­ther raise our envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards in the bot­tling and brew­ing process after an exten­sive build­ing per­mit process and a coro­na-relat­ed short­age of raw mate­ri­als or build­ing mate­ri­als. The ven­ti­lat­ed blend­ing and equal­iza­tion tank, which will go into oper­a­tion imme­di­ate­ly, meets the lat­est tech­ni­cal as well as the high­est eco­log­i­cal stan­dards. The mea­sure­ment and con­trol tech­nol­o­gy used ensures auto­mat­ed, process-sta­ble waste­water pre­treat­ment. Our waste­water treat­ment plant, which is com­mis­sioned in par­al­lel, sup­ports the anaer­o­bic waste­water pre­treat­ment in order to biode­grade it in the best pos­si­ble way. With a bio­gas pro­duc­tion sys­tem con­nect­ed to this, we will be able to gen­er­ate our own CO₂-neu­tral elec­tric­i­ty with around 612,000 KW/h of gas via the waste­water treat­ment plant in the future, sav­ing around 137 tons of CO₂.”

- Georg Rittmay­er, Man­ag­ing Director

Ecological milestones 

The recent­ly imple­ment­ed con­struc­tion mea­sures add to a long his­to­ry of var­i­ous eco­log­i­cal mile­stones already achieved by the brew­ery itself: for exam­ple, reg­u­lar CO₂ sav­ings of 140 tons per year have been achieved since 2005 with the help of a nitro­gen recov­ery sys­tem, and since 2013, around 140,000 liters of heat­ing oil per year have been saved due to a switch to wood­chip heating.

Oth­er mea­sures, such as the con­ver­sion of elec­tric­i­ty pro­cure­ment from hydropow­er, the intro­duc­tion of an ener­gy-sav­ing pro­gram using heat stor­age, and the intro­duc­tion of its own ener­gy and recy­clables cycle (includ­ing cer­ti­fied sup­port for region­al agri­cul­ture with feed from spent grains) have also con­tributed to the brew­ery from Hallern­dorf being one of the most envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly brew­eries in Bavaria for decades.