Royal Swinkels Family Brewers achieves energy savings of over 15% for its Lieshout location

November 16, 2020

Substantial energy savings through the use of a hot water buffer

After completing an energy-saving programme, Royal Swinkels Family Brewers is making a large part of the brewery, bottling plant and malting plant in Lieshout more sustainable in one fell swoop. This involves the installation of a hot water buffer, with which the family brewer achieves energy savings of more than 15%, equivalent to 4 million m3 natural gas per year. Central to the new system is a large tank with hot water. This tank is fed with residual heat from the brewery and malting plant and passes this heat on to the processes needed to brew beer. In this way, the residual heat is no longer lost, but reused. Additional heat pumps, condensers and flue gas coolers ensure that the hot water is at the right temperature and at the right place at the right time. The brewery also uses less steam, which also results in energy gains.

Fewer heat sources required due to the use of a hot water buffer
Swinkels Family Brewers focuses on circular entrepreneurship, in which circular production and high-quality reuse are important parts of the process. By dealing efficiently with the supply and demand of heat in the various production processes, the loss of energy is reduced. Marthijn Junggeburth, sustainability manager: "We are currently working on several projects to make our energy consumption even more sustainable. We will first focus on reducing our energy consumption as much as possible. Then we’ll look at how we can make the energy we do use as sustainable as possible. With the introduction of the hot water buffer, we have succeeded in this and we’re showing that it’s possible to use heat even more efficiently. This is a very important step in our company's energy transition. The realisation of a hot water buffer ensures that fewer heat sources are needed, because from now on we can use the residual heat in our brewing processes.”

Saving natural gas for more than 2000 households
The new process is expected to save at least 4 million m3 of natural gas, comparable to the gas consumption of more than 2000 households. Other production locations of Swinkels Family Brewers also have energy-saving programmes, such as the malting plant in the Eemshaven where they’re also working on optimising the use of residual heat.

Saving energy fits in with our ambitions for circular entrepreneurship. Swinkels Family Brewers uses their own calculation, the "Swinkels Circularity Index" (SCI), to measure how far they have progressed with circular entrepreneurship. The SCI calculation method makes it possible to link the circularity of the entire company to concrete objectives, to gain insight into the processes and, if necessary, to make adjustments. The family brewer expects to achieve a circularity score of 48% in 2020.

The family brewer believes in a mix of energy sources and will therefore also look at other renewable energy sources, such as purchasing green electricity, biogas and hydrogen. It also tests iron powder as a fuel for generating heat. Recently, Swinkels Family Brewers, presented the world's first industrial plant using iron powder as a new circular fuel together with TU Eindhoven and the Metal Power Consortium. They are also investigating whether geothermal energy can be a solution for part of the energy needs.