GEA partners with Unilever to improve sustainability on dairy farms

A cooperation to generate value for farmers

The GEA manure enricher enables dairy farms to produce environmentally friendly organic fertilizer locally on their farms just with their livestock slurry, air and electricity. Through innovative plasma technology, nitrogen from the air is added into the manure. At the same time, the manure enricher technology utilizes all available nutrients on the farm by reducing ammonia losses, that typically occur during storage and field application, by up to 95 percent. All nutrients including increased nitrogen is available to the plants in a targeted and immediate manner. Thus, plant growth is supported, and the crop yield can be increased by up to 40% compared to untreated manure. Moreover, methane emissions from manure storage are eliminated during the process. All these effects can reduce a farm's overall carbon footprint by up to 30 percent.

“At Unilever we are convinced that technology and innovation is key to decarbonize the dairy industry“, says Eric Soubeiran, Managing Director - Climate and Nature Fund at Unilever. This partnership between four dairy farmers of our supplier CONO Kaasmakers, Unilever and GEA is a good illustration of creating a circular farm management system. By implementing this technology, we are deploying our regenerative strategy and support significant reduction of the carbon footprint of our dairy ingredients. This ultimately provides more sustainable products for our consumers.”

“An important part of our Next Generation Farming philosophy is to empower dairy farmers around the world to sustainably future-proof their operations in times of tight margins, environmental regulations and increasing complexity. And at the end of the day to produce milk and food more climate-friendly. Therefore, we are very pleased that Unilever has chosen GEA as partner, as this is an important endorsement for our innovative solutions,” says Peter Lauwers, CEO of GEA Farm Technologies. “As one of the world's largest system suppliers for the food industry and frontrunner for sustainable change, we will put all our efforts together with Unilever on this manure enricher solution to promote circular farming.”