Demo case with Fresh4C’s to provide fresh water for local growers Monday 09 August 2021
With the partnership with Fresh4C’s we can really make steps towards our our local growers during dry periods to increase their fresh water availability, instead of sending cleaned process water (effluent) to the sea.
In our Kruiningen factory (NL) we use about 1,5 mln m3 of water delivered by Evides in our processes to turn a potato into a Lamb Weston fry or potato product. Water reduction is one of our objectives on our Sustainability Agenda 2030. Because the availability of fresh water in dry periods is a challenge for our growers, we started this participation with Fresh4C’s. Our growers need a lot of fresh water to let their potatoes grow, so one of our ambitions is to reuse cleaned process water. Evides invested in a Ultrafiltration system (Innowater) which is operational since FY20. With this investment Lamb Weston need less fresh water from the Biesbosch. Nevertheless we still have cleaned process water that is currently send to the Sea (Westerschelde).
To realize this idea of reusing this cleaned process water for local farmers, there were 2 hurdles: 1. how to transport the water towards the farmers and 2. how to reduce the phosphate to a level acceptable for discharging on the ditch. By developing a monitoring plan and do research on different scenario’s, we are able to come up with a technical solution that really helps our local growers in Kruiningen during dry periods to increase their fresh water availability and to improve the potato crop. And what do you think when we can also implement this solution in our other 5 factories in Europe. Then we are really creating impact.
Lamb Weston is one of the 10 official partners in the Fresh4Seas project with the aim to share our knowledge through the Fresh4C program. In this project we work together with an internal expert team in close collaboration for 3 years with a team of students from the HZ University of Applied Science.
