The Emsland Group, an international market leader in manufacturing products out of plant-based raw materials for the food and other industries, has contracted GEA for the new construction and expansion of its potato protein production line at the Wietzendorf site in Germany. The company previously partnered with GEA in 2018 for the construction of its protein line at the German Kyritz plant. The follow-up order for the production line in Wietzendorf, valued in the low single-digit million-euro range, includes planning, delivery, and installation support for the entire process line for converting potato juice into high-quality protein. According to a company statement, in addition to the plate heat exchangers, fittings, measuring instruments and pumps required, the contract includes several protein Master CF6000 decanters.
“When it comes to protein recovery, the quality of the end product as well as the professional management of the process to ensure a high yield from centrifugal separation are critically important,” Tobias Niemeyer, project engineer at the Emsland Group’s Wietzendorf location explains. “Along with the excellent advice and planning provided by the GEA product and project managers, we were particularly impressed with the outstanding performance and flexibility of the decanters. They offer both the necessary adjustment options to react flexibly to the quality of our natural products and the reliability we need to meet our high-quality expectations with constant as well as fluctuating processing outputs.”
The Emsland Group processes around 2.2 million tons of vegetable raw materials such as potatoes, peas, and mung beans each year at its sites in Germany, making them into products that are exported to more than 120 countries. The Wietzendorf starch plant is situated in the middle of the Luneburg Heath close to the town of Soltau in northern Germany. Here, some 254,000 tons of potatoes are processed during each campaign, producing up to 60,000 tons of starch products.