Brewers set their sights beyond beer in the drive to capture new markets

What was once a mature, established industry is shapeshifting into a new dynamic environment where new flavours and products are being developed against a backdrop of increasing pressure to establish sustainability in manufacturing with a high priority on saving water and energy. 

Alfa Laval is in a pole position as an expert partner to help breweries navigate this process, and John Kyle Dorton, Vice President of Brewery Systems, sees exciting times and opportunities ahead in an industry that has already experienced huge recent changes and challenges. 

He believes that brewers must work with expert partners to succeed – partners with the know-how to add value at every stage of the process and who understand the complex interrelationships and dependencies at work along the different workstreams. 

“The process of the fermentation, the brewhouse, the packaging, the actual on-site power generation in some instances – all of these add up to a lot of energy and water use and a lot of emissions. We are in a great position regarding the different pain points in the brewery that can be addressed, especially if you want to reduce the use of water and energy and increase yield,” he says. 

“The level of change required is huge, and this is where Alfa Laval makes a difference as the breweries upgrade. We bring that expertise that allows us to bridge beyond the product level and to understand the impacts throughout the entire process to fully optimize what is going on from many angles – not just the product quality but also the efficiency of the various streams, primary energy sources and emissions, and optimizing the yield.”  

What makes the industry even more fascinating and varied – and the need for an expert partner with a global reach even more important – is that every region is at a different stage of the journey, with different consumer and governmental demands. However, wherever the geography is, it is clear that brewing is no longer an industry that is just about beer. 

“Brewers are moving into other areas, non-alcoholic beers, diversifying into functional beverages – to near beer or beyond beer – and we are ready to help them on their journey,” says John Kyle. “For instance, in brewery streams, there are spent products with many proteins that can be extracted for other uses, such as health products.  These products can be extracted with Alfa Laval technologies – separators and decanters – so we are here for our customers, and the possibilities are almost limitless.” 

“The competence that we built over decades is reflected in our product lineup and our people. It’s reflected in how our people approach a customer, how we conduct the discussion, how we explore their needs and the upstream/downstream impacts, and how we understand what the market is doing and why. We can arm our customers with invaluable and unique insight and support them in going the right way, rather than just pushing a particular product at them.” 

This approach is key in supporting breweries in the drive to be more sustainable through the development and implementation of water-saving technologies, such as beer concentration and water recycling. The former ensures that less product is transported, which means fewer emissions. It also keeps the extracted water in the brewery and allows brewers to operate within stricter limits for water use. The latter recycles and reuses separator cooling water. This, together with the burst-clean mode control on valves that ensures efficient water use during the cleaning phase, is part of an unbeatable Alfa Laval offering. 

“Our portfolio has been shaped by the latest issues and drivers impacting the brewing industry, so with every brew, we are hitting different pain points and making a difference – and we have the knowledge and expertise to develop and improve that through our R&D, which is unmatched in separation, heat transfer and flow control,” says John Kyle. 

That expertise sits not just with water but also energy, where Alfa Laval can again make a huge impact. Alfa Laval has partnerships with many companies that are focused on energy reduction, green hydrogen, long-term energy storage, and the like, offering huge opportunities in brewing, where a lot of power generation is ‘in-house’. 

“The footprint of some brewery sites is akin to that of small cities,” says John Kyle. “We are in that energy space already – and I’m bringing in some of this portfolio and offering it to breweries because, in some instances, they are not aware of this potential that they could tap into. 

“We’re driving this, and Alfa Laval is very well positioned in many areas to actually allow some of the brewery groups to achieve net zero, which they wouldn’t be able to do on their own. Where we take it from here is up to us, but I’m excited by the possibilities.”