From waste to feed to food to future
Arla Foods Ingredients’ core business is turning whey, a former waste product, into high-quality nutritional ingredients. My job is to make sure the biproducts from those value-adding processes are also turned into something useful and don't go to waste. That’s next level waste processing, and it’s good for both the bottom line and sustainability.
Creating value with feed that improve animal lives
Every year, we generate thousands of tons of high-quality biproducts at our plants. My job is to find the best and most sustainable and profitable way to use these biproducts. Add to that, the products that for some reasons don’t quite meet our own high standards and have to be sold for other purposes and you have a rapidly growing mountain of products to be made use of. On top of our own biproducts, I also have to find a home for some 500.000 tons of Arla Foods amba dairy biproducts annually. That’s 40 truckloads every day. And that’s why I never have a dull day! The liquid milk and whey biproducts are used as feed for production animals, where our permeates and lactose have a positive effect on - among other thing - digestion in pigs, leading to a reduction in the use of antibiotics in young animals.
Next generation wonders from waste
I have a Master's in Animal Science and my understanding of the processes of digestion and fermentation has helped us open up biogas as a new business area. A biogas facility is a mechanical intestine full of microorganisms a bit similar to the pig’s intestinal flora. My biggest dream is to help make Danish pig farming more closed-loop, more local and more sustainable. If we could extract the phosphor from our biproduct, Danish feed producers could reduce the import of phosphor from Morocco. Squeezing everything out of every drop of milk would be a sustainable next generation wonder.
The wonders of freedom
Besides my bright interns, I’m a one man army but I never feel lonely. I work closely with colleagues from all over Arla Foods Ingredients and Arla Foods amba. What has made me able to succeed so far has been that I’ve been given the freedom to do business the way I want. My manager has great faith in me and my expertise. As long as I’ve shown progress, I’ve been allowed to continue. I love that my job is fast paced and changes almost every day; it makes me curious about the new and I avoid going into "autopilot mode". But I also enjoy the more simple living; once I close my computer for the day, I go home to my family and our farm half an hour drive away from Aarhus. Here, we run a small agriculture with animals and production. Being able to do that besides my work gives me energy.