Sustainable Process Solutions

The Drive Toward Green and Natural

Reduce Your Environmental Footprint and Go Green - GEA has a range of systems and solutions that enable reliable, contained and environmentally sustainable processing.

Many traditional home and personal care, food and dairy, brewery and beverage, pharmaceutical and biotechnology, and chemical manufacturers have acknowledged the consumer trend towards green, natural or even organic products. The consumer awareness of the environmental impact generated by various products has risen significantly over the past decade as consumers have been exposed to more information regarding the environmental concerns through the media. Dramatic stories about the need to reuse water, reduce energy consumption, recycle electronics and the potential dangers of chemicals in consumer products have become commonplace. In addition, recent communications for many green products leverage dual messages: the financial rewards of resource-efficiency and the reduction in environmental impact. With these growing concerns about damaging the environment, manufacturers will find more eager consumers of green alternatives, and continued innovation of green products is needed to meet the changing landscape. To add such production lines into existing processing facilities creates a unique set of challenges that often includes concerns for containment and cross contamination.

Additionally, many natural ingredients are bio-sensitive and will degrade if not properly processed and contained prior to packaging. To tackle these issues, GEA Process Engineering has focused and specialized in this important segment and has a range of solutions that enable reliable, contained and environmentally sustainable processing. The issues are identified and process solutions proposed through the delivery of:

GEA Liquid Processing - engineering a sustainable and more competitive approach to production: cleaner, safer, energy efficient

• Feasibility studies
• Site surveys
• Process audits
• Conceptual designs
• Detail engineering
• Utility studies and calculations

Sustainable Process and Production Solutions - A sustainable approach to help make your manufacturing operation cleaner, safer, more energy efficient .. and more competitive.

GEA Process Engineering offers a complete approach to meeting your sustainability objectives in all facets of your processing. Our approach is designed to help you turn sustainability challenges into a competitive business advantages.

GEA Process Engineering can help you in your role of enabling sustainable production. It is our business to help our customers by providing solutions for your energy, environmental, workplace safety and product integrity challenges.

Enhance Your Sustainability and Reduce Your Environmental Footprint

GEA Process Engineering address these sustainability objectives through our process and engineering capabilities:

The following are typically the most significant sustainable issues and can contribute significantly to the bottom line:

• Reduced batch times or continuous process
• Preservative free products/no cross contamination
• Reduced chemical and water consumption
• CIP (Clean In Place) caustic recovery using membrane filtration
• Reduced effluent and emission
• Minimized rework due to consistent product quality
• Reduced energy consumption
  • through heat recovery networks
  • through equipment & high efficiency motors/drives
  • through efficient pipe and tank insulation
  • through efficient heating and cooling transfer systems
• Increased yield through product recovery
• Recover by-products in effluents as a marketable product
• Energy optimization

Sustainable Engineering

Sustainable Engineering is a about designing products and processes that can be optimized to desired criteria and that incorporate environmental and societal benefit factors while assessing impacts of resource use (energy, material, and cost) on environmental and social benefits (or otherwise) of products, processes, and services. Sustainable Engineering is also about designing new processes or products that are comparatively benign (such as via green chemistry and engineering approaches) as well as responding to socioeconomic measures such as emission trading. GEA Process Engineering is a leading provider of Sustainable Engineering solutions - in other words GEA Process Engineering enable companies to embrace Corporate Sustainability.

It should be noted that it is not only the consumer trends which are driving the green wave. Corporate Sustainability is pushing the same philosophy towards the consumer, their employees and the general society. Corporate Sustainability is a business approach that creates long-term shareholder value by embracing opportunities and managing risks deriving from economic, environmental and social developments. Corporate sustainability leaders achieve long-term shareholder value by gearing their strategies and management to harness the market's potential for sustainability products and services while at the same time successfully reducing and avoiding sustainability costs and risks. Numerous processing companies* have already embraced this strategy and have been selected for inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes. The list includes companies like 3M Co., Abbott Laboratories, Alcoa, Baxter International, Chevron Corp., Coca-Cola Co., ConocoPhillips, Dow Chemical Co., Eastman Kodak Co., FMC Technologies Inc., Genzyme Corp., H.J. Heinz Co., Johnson & Johnson, Kraft Foods Inc., PepsiCo Inc., Pfizer Inc., Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc., and Procter & Gamble Co. just to mention a few.

*Process Companies: here defined as companies which employ a substantial amount of engineered process equipment and systems. In other words, the target market for GEA Process Engineering Inc.