A unique factory
Duynie is a leading company producing vegetable ingredients for pet food and food industries using only vegetable co-products as raw materials. These co-products arise during the processing of potatoes, sugar beet, fruit, vegetables, chicory and corn into human food.
In doing so, Duynie contributes to closing loops by maximising the use of raw materials and avoiding waste. The company has the ambition to produce in a climate-neutral way, which means it strives to use residual heat and green electricity in its production processes.
Duynie is Europe’s largest company active in the valorisation of co-products released during the production and processing of food, beverages and biofuels. By processing co-products into new products, services and applications, Duynie creates added value for suppliers, customers and the environment. Duynie is part of the agro-industrial cooperative Cosun.
Project description
Duynie has the ambition to produce in a climate-neutral way. This means that she strives to use residual heat and green electricity to produce her ingredients. Because Duynie puts sustainability at the heart of everything she does, it was decided to build the factory on a plot right next to the bio-energy plant in the port of Cuijk. By working with residual heat from this plant, the production process has been kept feasible and sustainable. Duynie entered a partnership with Uticon for the design and realisation of a new factory and the necessary installations.
The challenge
“Support us in the design and construction of a factory and installations, which we use to convert vegetable waste streams into ingredients for pet food. We want to do this based on residual heat from the adjacent bio-energy plant”. That was Duynie’s question to Uticon in 2017. In such a situation, companies are waiting on all kinds of studies to be done and finalised before a factory or installation is designed and built. But Duynie Ingredients chose to switch quickly and learn by doing, also because the company did not want to pass up the possibility of collaboration with the bio-energy plant. This unique starting point made high demands on the collaboration between Duynie and Uticon.
The solution
How exactly would the drying of these waste streams take place, which raw materials would be processed and how the residual heat of the neighbour could best be used, little was known about this. In a project with so many unfamiliarity’s, it is even more important that the lines between customer and Uticon are kept short. The multidisciplinary composition of the Uticon team made it possible to implement the new and developing insights quickly and in a coordinated manner. Uticon also chose to install a dedicated project team on site during the construction phase. This intensive cooperation between Duynie, Uticon and the contractors and suppliers made this realisation possible.
The result is a new factory with a building capacity of approximately 60,000 m3, and a considerable production capacity of raw materials that can be processed into the final product using residual heat. In this way, Uticon succeeded, despite all the dynamics, in continuously keeping stakeholders connected and learning from the experiences as efficiently as possible. This will remain important in the coming period.
Expertise
"Uticon never avoided difficult things, did not give up and always continued to work. With a clear focus on the end goal. I have worked with some of Uticon for three years
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Mark Horvers
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