New Strategies for Improving the Sustainability of Breweries: Full Waste Recovery for Aquaculture Feed (BREWERY)

Short description of the project: LIFE-Brewery was a four-year project funded by the LIFE Programme, aimed at demonstrating an innovative and highly replicable integrated solution to recover brewery by-products as aquaculture-feed ingredients.

Tangible results: The project developed an innovative, sustainable and safe technological solution. An enzymatic hydrolysis allows to obtain at the same time high value compounds for human food and a new and more digestible ingredient for aquaculture feed, giving a high value to the beer by-products. The stabilisation step combines highly efficient technologies to ensure nutritional quality and safety, while guaranteeing the economic viability of the ingredients obtained. A production plant has been eco-designed following the ISO 14006 methodology, which is flexible and adaptable to any scenario and dimension.

Application/relevance: The solution is highly replicable to any scenario. It has helped increase the environmental efficiency and competitiveness of the brewing sector through a sustainable use of resources and minimization of waste management costs; and increase the EU aquaculture sustainability by providing 2 sustainable raw materials from spent grain and yeast for aquaculture feed which decreases the dependence of fish meal production.