Planning for a new alternative protein plant in Nebraska

GEA is fur­ther expand­ing its mar­ket posi­tion in the dynam­i­cal­ly grow­ing new food sec­tor with one of the largest orders in the com­pa­ny’s his­to­ry. Novozymes, the world’s largest sup­pli­er of enzyme and micro­bial tech­nolo­gies based in Den­mark, is entrust­ing GEA with the turnkey equip­ment of a large-scale plant for the pro­duc­tion of plant-based pro­teins required for the pro­duc­tion of plant-based foods. The order is worth well into the upper dou­ble-dig­it mil­lion euro range. Con­struc­tion will begin this year; the new plant in Nebras­ka, USA, is expect­ed to start pro­duc­tion at the end of 2023.

“There is a huge increase in demand for food prod­ucts that have a demon­stra­bly bet­ter envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance than con­ven­tion­al­ly pro­duced prod­ucts. With our tech­nolo­gies and expe­ri­ence in scal­ing indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions, GEA is ide­al­ly posi­tioned to serve the new-food mar­ket, con­tribut­ing to our cor­po­rate pur­pose of ‘engi­neer­ing for a bet­ter world.’ We are pleased to part­ner Novozymes in this strate­gic project.”

- Ste­fan Kle­bert, CEO

Novozymes has been devel­op­ing fer­ment­ed cat­alyt­ic — i.e. indus­tri­al­ly pro­duced — enzymes for decades, which are the basis for appli­ca­tions in numer­ous indus­tries. Just recent­ly, the com­pa­ny announced plans to invest DKK two bil­lion in the growth mar­ket of func­tion­al pro­teins, so-called advanced pro­tein solu­tions, for the food indus­try. “The invest­ment in a new state-of-the-art pro­duc­tion line in Blair, Nebras­ka, under­scores our com­mit­ment to sus­tain­ably feed­ing the world and demon­strat­ing the true pow­er of biotech­nol­o­gy,” said Gra­ziela Chaluppe dos San­tos Malu­cel­li, COO and Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent Novozymes.

The new pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty includes man­u­fac­tur­ing steps from har­vest­ing to sep­a­ra­tion of the pro­tein. Accord­ing to Heinz-Jür­gen Kro­ner, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent Liq­uid Tech­nolo­gies and respon­si­ble for the New Food busi­ness in the Group, both part­ners are unit­ed by their abil­i­ty to build scal­able, high­ly effi­cient and reli­able plants: “The project is excep­tion­al in many respects: the inten­sive bid­ding phase led to the plan­ning of the pro­duc­tion lines for the ingre­di­ents in less than a year. We will go to imple­men­ta­tion at the same pace. We are expe­ri­enc­ing a very reward­ing partnership.”

The com­pa­ny will now build the process equip­ment — which includes mem­brane fil­tra­tion, mix­ers, homog­e­niz­ers, heat exchang­ers, heat treat­ment equip­ment, clean­ing, fill­ing, and the pump and valve tech­nol­o­gy — and begin instal­la­tion in mid-2022. Pro­duc­tion is mod­u­lar, so ini­tial capac­i­ty can eas­i­ly be expand­ed as demand increases.