Carlsberg

How Carlsberg halved water use through industrial water reuse

Challenge

Carlsberg’s brewery in Fredericia, Denmark, aimed to significantly reduce freshwater consumption without compromising water quality. As water is essential for both brewing and cleaning processes, the challenge was to recover and reuse process water safely and efficiently while supporting the group’s ambitious sustainability targets.

Solution

Pantarein Water developed an integrated wastewater treatment system combining anaerobic treatment, an aerobic membrane bioreactor (MBR), reverse osmosis and UV treatment. BLUE FOOT‘s IPC® ultrafiltration membranes provide reliable solid-liquid separation, enabling further purification and reuse of treated water for cleaning operations within the brewery.

Results

The brewery now recycles 90% of its process water, reducing water consumption from 2.9 to 1.4 litres per litre of beer. This represents annual savings of more than 500 million litres of water. By March 2023, Carlsberg estimated cumulative savings of almost one billion litres after approximately two years of operation.