AgriChemWhey<\/a> is a consortium comprising 11 partners from 5 member states (manufacturers, technical specialists, councils and educational institutions) that will work together to valorise excess by-products from the dairy industry to value added products such as lactic acid, polylactic acid, minerals for human nutrition and bio-based fertilisers. Providing the backing to make this project a success is the Bio-Based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI JU), the \u20ac3.7bn public-private EU partnership that aims to lower Europe\u2019s dependency on fossil-based products by increasing investment in the development of a sustainable bio-based industry sector in Europe, and the European Commission.<\/p>\nTo learn more about this fascinating project that works in tandem with the Emerald Isle\u2019s thriving agricultural sector, Bill Morrissey, procurement manager with one of the companies at the head of AgriChemWhey, Glanbia Ireland, spoke to Bio-Based World News about the BBI JU partnership.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see lots of potential for this sector and our project is just the start of it,\u201d says Morrissey. \u201cIt started out as a supply chain contract to dispose of one of the major side streams of whey processing – whey permeate and delactosed permeate. Through our research, we have found a sustainable solution for disposing of these by-products, which can add value by creating a circular bio-economy centred on the dairy industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
The end product primarily produced by AgriChemWhey is lactic acid, the major market for which is the manufacture of the biodegradable plastic polylactic acid (PLA). But what makes this lactic acid so special, says Bill Morrissey who has been with Glanbia Ireland since 2007, is that it\u2019s manufacture has no impact on food production. \u201cWhat we\u2019ll be producing is actually from second-generation feedstock, it isn\u2019t from primary foods, which all other lactic acids are. We\u2019re also a multi-product bio-refinery, producing probiotics from the same facility to make this project work from an economic point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n
Explaining its success, Morrissey makes it plain that without the help of the BBI JU, which is providing \u20ac22m (\u00a319.5m) of support, the project would be in a very different place. \u201cThe reality is this project wouldn\u2019t have taken place had it not been for the BBI JU. What they have done has de-risked the whole thing. It\u2019s not just about the money \u2013 which is huge \u2013 they also allow us to bring in partners with new technologies to offer, creating a whole eco system for this to take place.\u201d That consortia approach, says Morrissey, is key to the project\u2019s success because with such new and evolving technologies, there is a real need \u201cto have all the support you can get\u201d. \u201cBy disseminating, other partners allow you to add value to their by-products and that\u2019s vital to the whole thing \u2013 particularly when the margins we\u2019re dealing with are tight.\u201d<\/p>\n
The AgriChemWhey project, which started in January 2018, will be based at Lisheen, County Tipperary. This \u00a0bio-economy innovation and piloting facility has been something of a game changer, putting the bio production facilities that keep AgriChemWhey going on its doorstep.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was one of the major challenges we had when we started \u2013 we had no pilot lab facilities so we couldn\u2019t prove internally to our stakeholders that this works at 1,000-litre level, as we were always at a 100-litre level. We had to go to Europe to use facilities there, which delayed the AgriChemWhey project by about two years. We don\u2019t have that problem now,\u201d he says. \u201cNow we have such high levels of expertise in Ireland it\u2019ll be a huge enabler for the entire bio-economy. That, combined with the unparalleled support from the BBI JU, puts Ireland in a great place.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the future, Morrissey concludes by providing a snapshot of what 2018 and beyond has in store. \u201cWell, after having submitted planning permission we\u2019ll have a team of 15 on site in Lisheen, and from there we\u2019ll be going into basic engineering followed by detailed engineering. After that we\u2019ll hope to turn soil in 12 months\u2019 time for a \u20ac60m multi-product bio-refinery.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Among the many positives of bio-based chemicals and feedstock production is that they often use materials that would otherwise be put to waste, fulfilling a vital aspect of the circular economy. In order to make this process as sustainable as possible, it\u2019s necessary to make use of resources that are close by. Being forced to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[6843,12575],"supplier":[8031,11909,14091],"class_list":["post-51433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-biochemicals","tag-nutrition","supplier-bbi-joint-undertaking","supplier-bio-based-industries-consortium-bic","supplier-glanbia-plc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51433"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=51433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}