Arla Foods: Heat pump innovation reduces emissions in milk powder production
31 Oct 2025 | Arla Foods
Arla Foods has installed a high-temperature electric heat pump at its milk powder site in Svenstrup, Denmark, cutting emissions from one of dairy’s most energy-intensive processes — spray drying — by over 1,500 metric tons of CO2 annually. Line Brandt Pedersen, director of Supply Chain Sustainability at Arla Foods, discusses how replacing natural gas with a CO2-based system helps dairies reduce fossil fuel use and advance climate goals.
Hi, this is Insha Noreen, journalist at Food Ingredients First.
Arla Foods has successfully deployed a new high temperature electric heat pump at its milk powder site in Swenstrup, Denmark.
It has replaced natural gas with a CO2-based system for spray drying.
To tell us more about this initiative, Linne Brand Pedersen, director of supply chain sustainability at Ala Food, is joining us today.
Welcome, Linne.
Thank you so much.
Welcome.
So can you start by telling us what prompted the company to tackle one of the most energy intensive challenges in dairy production, and specifically the spray drying process?
Yes, thank you for the question.
So spray drying is one of the most energy insensitive processes in dairy production and especially milk powder.
And at our site, FKKF as it is called in Denmark.
It is requiring air heated at up to 120 degrees for the milk powder process.
And traditionally, this step is mainly powered by gas.
So decarbonizing this step of the production is significantly reducing our CO2 emissions of the site, and it's directly impacting, especially scope one, which can usually be very difficult to eliminate.
So I would say this project is very much supporting us in our, our climate ambitions.
OK, great.
Thank you for explaining that.
And, how do you think the new temperature electric heat pump technology differs from the conventional heat pumps which are used in dairy production?
Yeah, so we also have experience with the conventional heat pumps, and they usually they only produce heat at temperatures that are up to 100 degrees, and this means they cannot be used to produce steam.
So on the other hand, the high temperature heat pumps, they can deliver temperatures that are high enough to produce steam, and it gives us an opportunity to electrify steam production.
Which was previously only something we could do by using e-boilers and e-boilers they have a lower energy efficiency compared to heat pumps.
So they're a great advantage for us that we can also use these type of heat pumps for for those processes.
OK, interesting.
And, how will the successful implementation of this heat pump technology impact our our Foods broader sustainability goals?
And at A level, we are, we have a very ambitious goal where we're committed to reduce 1 and 2 emissions by 63% by 2030 compared to a baseline of 2015.
And the KFA heat pump project is a significant step into meeting that target.
So by replacing the fossil-based heating with renewable electricity, the dairy can significantly reduce its dependence on natural gas.
And also I can say that we have been very pleased to find out that this is a solution that is not only supporting our climate ambitions, but it's also making society more resilient and more energy efficient, and actually it's also financially very attractive for us.
So, what are the next steps for scaling?
Efforts to other countries and production facilities in Ireland, we are committed to explore all feasible pathways in order to decarbonize our operations, and the main lever that we have identified, especially in Europe, is electrification, including heat pumps.
So we have already installed multiple heat pumps at our sites, and we have, we are also installing multiple heat pumps as we speak, and we have even more in our pipeline.
So heat pumps is definitely a significant lever to reach our CO2 targets.
OK, thank you.
And as a sustainability expert, what do you see as the next step for the dairy industry in achieving the environmental goals?
So the next big step for us is definitely first of all, to continue scaling our electrification, and moving away from fossil fuels to using renewable electricity.
But besides that, we are also very much investigating the use of thermal energy storage.
We also investigating smart energy management.
And also we believe that innovations together with suppliers in general is very key in order to accelerate our efforts.
Besides that, we also believe that the sharing best practices across industries is important and collaboration across industries, and also that we believe will significantly accelerate the progress.
And finally, I also want to state again that we believe in AA that in order for sustainability to be a long term, lasting benefit for the company.
We need to prove that sustainability and performance can go hand in hand.
And we believe that the, the high temperature heat pump project in a cafe is a very good example of exactly that.
OK, great.
Thank you so much for those great insights.
You're welcome.
