Green Tech: Tetra Pak helps Chinese dairy firms automate production, cut energy and water usage, carbon emissions
- Food packaging giant Tetra Pak implements a programme for reducing energy, waste, and the usage of water and chemicals associated with the equipment it sells
- The company plans to tap demand for alternative protein by selling equipment to help Chinese companies make products with smaller greenhouse gas footprints than meat
China’s dairy industry – the world’s fourth largest – is fast embracing automation and innovation to become more efficient and sustainable, and food packaging and equipment giant Tetra Pak is helping drive this change which is aimed at not only cutting production costs, but also at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“China has been a very important driver for innovation in dairy in the last couple of decades,” Charles Brand, Tetra Pak’s executive vice-president of processing solutions and equipment told the Post, referring to the country’s large scale dairy farms and processing plants, which have adopted modern technology for efficiency gains.
“One of the big things happening there is automation, in which we are working with customers on making dairy manufacturing fully intelligent,” he said.
Established in Lund, Sweden in 1951 and now Switzerland-headquartered, Tetra Pak is a privately-owned firm which makes equipment for manufacturing cheese, ice-cream, dairy milk powder and alternative protein, besides cartons.
Higher energy and water costs, caused by geopolitical and extreme climate events, have prompted food producers to upgrade their production facilities for efficiency gains, and for energy and resource usage reduction, said Brand.