How We Helped Power Up Electrification Across Denmark's Entire Food Industry

From 2020 to 2024, Viegand Maagøe led an Industriens Fond–funded project (Industriens Fond is the Danish Industry Foundation) that set out to show, together with DI Fødevare, DI Energi, DTU, DI, Landbrug & Fødevarer, and Green Power Denmark, how 20 companies in the Danish food industry could concretely electrify their production processes.

Food companies want to electrify. It's the greener choice, and it makes production less dependent on natural gas.

But how do you actually electrify a boiling process, a drying tunnel, or a pasteurization line?

Many of the technologies already existed. But how do you put them into practice? And how do you make the economics, and your business case, add up?

Back in 2020, there was almost no one to ask. Only a handful of Danish food companies had electrified their production processes, and those that had were rarely open about their results.

The experience, the numbers, and the payback times stayed in-house. There was a need to document that electrification has a solid business case, and to get that documentation out in the open so the rest of the industry could use it.

Together with DTU (the Technical University of Denmark), we developed one case for each of the 20 food companies.

The approach for each case typically looked like this:

We carried out an energy mapping of the relevant process — not the whole factory, but specifically the part of the factory where the potential, and the process in focus, actually was. This mapping often revealed big surprises.

Together with DTU, we developed a concrete proposal using the right, mature technology: a heat pump, an electric boiler, mechanical vapor recompression, or, for example, a thermal rock storage system.

We calculated a full business case for each company: investment, rebuilding costs, payback time, energy and CO₂ savings, and what it means for the bottom line.

We split the work and the companies into four themes, covering the typical processes found across the food industry:

Drying & evaporation:
At TripleNine in Thyborøn, where over 90% of the drying energy came from coal and gas, the solution cut energy consumption by 47%. Lactosan, Arla Foods Ingredients, KMC's potato starch, and CP Kelco's (Tate & Lyle) citrus and seaweed pectin also belong to this group.

Boiling & baking: 
At Royal Unibrew in Faxe, a heat pump recovers the heat from boiling and cuts 25% of the brewery's total CO₂ emissions. Orkla, FF Skagen, Stryhns' liver pâté, Lakrids By Bülow, and Schulstad are also part of this group.

Pasteurization & sterilization: 
At Harboe in Skælskør, a storage tank recovers 69% of the waste heat from the cooling system that would otherwise be lost. Thise Mejeri and Ovodan's egg powder also belong to this group.

Central utility plants: 
At Arla in Svendstrup, a thermal rock storage system lets the factory buy electricity when it's cheapest and greenest. At Toms in Ballerup, the central heat supply is being electrified with five electric boilers and four electric heating elements, placed locally at the point of use — a solution that removes a large standby energy loss in the existing gas steam boilers. 
Arla Foods, Danish Crown Beef, Danepork, Essentia Protein Solutions, and Thise Mejeri are also part of this group.

The result is 20 concrete examples that show three things:

The technology exists and is mature. For every single process, we found a solution that effectively replaces fossil fuels — from heat pumps and electric boilers to vapor recompression, microwave drying, and thermal rock storage.

The economics hold up. In most cases, the payback time was between 2 and 10 years. The majority of the cases had payback times under 8 years, and 30% had a payback time under 4 years — improving further as energy prices rise, especially if the ratio between gas and electricity prices shifts. CO2 savings vary widely: from a few tons a year in the smallest cases to more than 13,000 tons in the largest. Denmark's new CO₂ tax now also adds a direct financial incentive.

You need to anchor it strategically. Electrification isn't necessarily a simple like-for-like swap of a single unit or machine — it's a management decision that involves production, finance, and procurement, with a long-term perspective.

But the solutions are just as relevant today as when we first helped power up electrification in Denmark's food industry in 2020. The 20 cases don't just show that it can be done. They show how.

For several of the companies, we've since gone a step further and led the actual implementation of electrification projects — from detailed mapping and engineering through to full operation.