Unlock the Potential of Your Plant with GEA NEXUS
A structured approach supported by GEA’s engineering experience
With our extensive experience across many industries and our strong internal focus on combining competencies across GEA divisions. We have developed a holistic engineering solutions for companies worldwide. These solutions can help optimize energy use, reduce CO₂ emissions and lower operating costs.*.
GEA Add Better Consulting and GEA NEXUS: two small steps, one giant leap
Over the years, we have helped green- and brownfield food and beverage producers address their process, energy and carbon reduction challenges. Challenges that call for an integrated approach to process, heating and cooling.
While efficiency improvements can be achieved through small, incremental steps such as optimizing a specific piece of equipment or a step in the process, greater opportunities can often be identified by examining the plant holistically, across the entire process chain.
GEA has developed a structured, approach that consists of two steps. In an assessment phase we call Add Better Consulting, we, together with the customer, analyze the current state of the production process. GEA’s heating and cooling process experts use that data, together with the precise energy requirements, to calculate and design improvement opportunities across processes, equipment upgrades and potential lower-carbon alternatives.
GEA NEXUS is about looping your resources to make the most of them. One of the bigenergy and money savers is upgrading and repurposing your waste heat.
Integrated expertise to help you meet KPIs and unlock further opportunities
Each GEA Add Better Consulting and GEA NEXUS project include a single point of contact for customers, backed by a cross-functional engineering team with experts from dairy, food or beverage processing, as required, as well as team members with refrigeration (heating & cooling) expertise in the respective processing industries. Supported by GEA sales and service experts, GEA NEXUS customers receive a holistic process analysis and proposal for an integrated process solution designed to reduce specified energy use, water consumption or CO2 emissions * leveraging GEA and GEA partner products.
We have a holistic approach – not looking into sustainability only, but a triangle of sustainability, performance and quality, so that we have all your needs covered. Our approach can help identify opportunities to optimize water and energy use and reduce waste across the plant.
Isabel Osterroth
Senior Director Sustainable Engineering Solutions at GEA
Isabel Osterroth, Senior Director Sustainable Engineering Solutions at GEA, leads the GEA NEXUS team.
Green or brownfield site? GEA NEXUS is the answer to both
Our GEA NEXUS teams can accommodate solution designs as well as system enhancements, depending on whether the situation involves a green- or brownfield site. In both cases, we provide a mapped overview of all process streams, a project-specific calculation of potential ROI, lifecycle benefits, TCO effects and CO2-emission reductions. Additionally, we offer a thorough description of the required cooling and heating, and, of course, the heat pump solution that is the best fit. All of this, together with a customized implementation plan and GEA as your single point of contact, provides a structured basis for turning project goals into implementable measures.
Where there is heat – there is energy
For many food and beverage plants, heating and cooling are significant contributors to overall energy consumption. This typically includes both waste heat flows and heat consumers. As a result, many food, beverage or dairy processing plant can benefit from integrating a GEA heat pump, because of its ability to take waste heat and boost (or cool) it for reuse in other production processes. In fact, GEA heat pump technology can achieve temperatures of up to 95 degrees Celsius or even higher, utilizing waste heat that would otherwise disappear into thin air.
The food, dairy and beverage industries are the main drivers for heat pump development, as they require higher temperatures for their processes. Depending on the process and plant configuration, GEA heat pumps can help reduce reliance on gas-fired boilers, including those used for hot-water generation. By recovering available heat and using electricity to provide useful process heat, heat pumps can help reduce energy consumption and CO₂ emissions. The potential impact can be greater when powered by renewable electricity.
If you look at the food, beverage and dairy sectors, they’re all basically produced inside a massive refrigerator, and anything that goes on in there generates warmth, or heat. And heat is energy.
Robert Unsworth
Global Technical Sustainability Manager, GEA Heating and Refrigeration Technologies
This GEA heat pump solution recycles waste heat for other industrial uses.
Decades of experience in one GEA NEXUS team
GEA’s unique Add Better Consulting and GEA NEXUS solutions are a culmination of our broad portfolio and industry know-how, combined with our refrigeration expertise. GEA has decades of experience helping customers improve the efficiency of their plants, and we’ve made it even easier for customers by providing an integrated offering via one dedicated NEXUS team. Several examples of their hard work are already paying off.
Supporting innocent’s lower-emission juice production ambitions
GEA’s experts are backing innocent’s big dreams all the way. This is the story of the “Earth’s favorite little healthy drinks factory” and how solutions were selected based on their potential to reduce CO₂ emissions and water consumption and create opportunities to recover value from waste.
45% decrease in gas use for Heineken
For HEINEKEN UK, the decarbonization journey starts with the installation of heat pumps and a heat pump network capturing and reusing heat to brew and package beer. With the new system, HEINEKEN UK will use a low temperature (90° C) hot water network – driven by GEA heat pumps - thus replacing the existing steam boilers with electrically powered heat pumps.
75% energy consumption reduction for Nestlé
At Nestlé’s plant, GEA will equip a milk powder line for hypoallergenic infant formula with the latest process and heat pump technology. According to Nestlé, thanks to an innovative heat recovery from the spray dryer and further processes, the plant will use 75 percent less energy for steam and reduce operational carbon emissions associated with steam generation. In this way, GEA is supporting Nestlé on its path to net zero by supporting Nestlé’s stated ambition to reduce emissions from the energy supply to its production facilities by 2050.
Our objective is to equip companies with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions and to provide them with a clear plan on how to pursue their business goals while supporting their defined sustainability targets. For us, it will never be a choice between one or the other; it will always be both.
Georg Munde
Director Application and Product Management Technology, Liquid & Powder Technologies
The sooner you ask, the better the help
No matter where you are on your decarbonization journey, what goals you have in terms of optimization or your upcoming initiatives to increase efficiency, you simply need to reach out today. The sooner we get in and become familiar with your exact process line, requirements, targets and challenges, the better we can help – not only with reaching goals but also with prioritizing the steps and every cent spent.
