How a valve reshapes the way food and drinks are made

A valve is easy to overlook. Yet how it opens, closes and holds its position shapes how an entire production line runs: how much is produced, how much energy it uses, how  clean it stays. A new addition to the GEA valve portfolio enables food and beverage producers to get more out of the space, energy and equipment they already have.

The way the world drinks beer is changing. Global volumes have stopped growing, holding at roughly 1.9 billion hectoliters a year. Alongside this, the range a single brewery has to produce keeps widening, from premium styles to the fast-growing no- and low-alcohol segment. In mature markets the squeeze is sharper. European production fell from 367 million hectoliters in 2019 to 345 million in 2024 alone, while the number of active breweries has plateaued at around 9,700.

The challenge, everywhere, is to get more variety out of a footprint that already exists. Much of that flexibility is decided surprisingly deep inside the process: at valve level. Across food and beverage plants, valves guide liquids through a network of pipes and tanks, regulate flow and help keep product and cleaning liquids safely separated. Whether a plant is running beer, milk or yogurt, they play a direct role in keeping production safe, consistent and efficient. Change how those valves are operated, and you change what the whole process can do.

Operating valves with water

In food and beverage plants, valves are commonly operated using compressed air. GEA Hydract® Actuation Technology moves valves with water instead, in a closed, digitally controlled circuit. The result is a valve that can be held exactly in place and steered in fine-tuned steps. This results in lower energy use and greater control. Combined with live data from every valve and the freedom to use existing tanks for a wider range of finished products, this solution gives producers the options they need to navigate changing markets.

The idea traces back to one engineer, Peter Espersen, today Senior Director Business Development in GEA’s Pure Flow Processing division. He draws a comparison with heavy machinery, where hydraulic systems use oil: “Traditional hydraulics using oil is a brute-force technology, basically designed to move massive excavators. Its’s about high pressure and high flow. When it came to food processing, my team knew we had to miniaturize everything, miniaturize hydraulic thinking.”

Espersen explains it with a simple image: “If you have a bicycle pump and you put your finger at the end and try to push it, it’s flexible. If you fill it with water on both sides, you cannot do anything. It’s just locked.” Because water does not compress, the valve holds its position precisely instead of simply opening and closing.

However, it took years of quiet, unglamorous development to prove it could work at the level of a hygienic valve. Today, seat positioning lands within 0.03 millimeters of its target, and a full regulation cycle takes half a second.

The GEA VARIVENT® range just gets better

GEA is bringing the technology into its established GEA VARIVENT® valve range for food and beverage production, starting with the most widely used valve types and extending from there. For producers, that means adopting water-hydraulic actuation without switching to a separate valve system.

The rollout starts where the impact is most immediate: three of the most widely used GEA VARIVENT® valve types (shut-off, divert and mix-proof applications), already cover most liquid-food processes. From there, the plan is to broaden hydraulic actuation across the entire GEA VARIVENT® range, with aseptic valves also on the roadmap for this upgrade.

Why breweries care about valves

The beer market is shrinking, and that is pushing brewers to rethink what they make. Some, like Krombacher, are adding entirely different beverages  to their product range. Others, like Störtebeker, now offer wide ranges of low- and no-alcohol beer. On top of the growing variety, brewers face stricter sustainability targets and steady pressure on operating costs. Producing all that variety efficiently comes down to timing, when each beer takes its final form. Precise valve control allows a brewery to maintain a small number of base beers and blend them into finished varieties just before bottling. The industry calls this: late product differentiation. This means fewer tanks to fill and clean, and less finished beer sitting in storage.

Carlsberg: More product variety, fewer tanks

“At Carlsberg’s brewery in Fredericia, Denmark, they rethought how beer moves from tank to bottle,” explains Bastian Tolle, Vice President Business Development and Digitalization, Business Unit Valves & Pumps. “The plant now blends a few concentrated base beers with water and other ingredients as they flow toward the bottling line, with the valves holding each mix to the exact recipe.”

The change shows up in the number of tanks: Carlsberg used to hold 39 beer varieties in 26 bright beer tanks. They stored the beer before packaging but were only 54 percent full on average. The redesigned line produces the same varieties from 8 to 10 base beers in just 14 tanks, filled to 90 percent capacity. That means far fewer tanks to clean and much better use of the space. Cleaning costs for the reduced number of tanks fell by around 55% and the brewery gains an estimated 86 to 160 percent more usable capacity without adding a single vessel.

“The tests of the hydraulic valves have exceeded our expectations,” says Anders Kokholm, Brewery Director, Carlsberg Supply Company Denmark. “The precision and reliability achieved with hydraulic valves versus compressed air enables a completely new approach to efficient beer production. It fundamentally changes the way we can produce beer in the future.”

The strategic value follows from there. Fewer tanks in use means less cleaning, and with it less water, energy and chemicals, so operating costs fall while the sustainability profile improves. The higher upfront investment in hydraulic actuation typically pays back within five to six years, sooner still in greenfield plants that never install a compressed-air network.

Energy savings spike when the compressor takes a back seat

Operating valves with water instead of compressed air cuts the electricity Carlsberg needs by more than 90 percent. The reason is simple: compressed air relies on a compressor running around the clock, while the water system only needs a small pump for a few minutes a day. At Carlsberg that meant swapping a 250-kilowatt compressor for a 2.2-kilowatt motor, about the power of an electric kettle, saving roughly 5,700 kilowatt-hours a day. Over a year that adds up to around two million kilowatt-hours.

Each valve a real-time source of data

Precision brings a second advantage. Because a hydraulic actuator holds its position exactly and controls that position digitally, it always knows where it is and what it has done. Every movement is logged, which turns each valve into a live source of data on the process and on its own condition. “We know exactly what the valve has done at any point in time, and whether the system is working or not,” says Espersen. “It is condition monitoring of our own product.” That visibility allows a plant to spot seal wear before it fails and plan maintenance around evidence instead of a calendar. In a plant that makes many different products, this level of transparency helps operators anticipate maintenance which means less downtime in production.

Why valves are critical in dairy processing

In dairy, the starting point is different. Milk is a high-value, perishable and living raw material. Zero waste and tight process control are a constant concern. Dairy plants run demanding cleaning regimes and are held to hygiene standards that few other food industries match. That means any technology entering the process has to earn its place in terms of reliability and control.

“This is where the digital side of hydraulic actuation matters most,” says Frederik Wellendorph, Sales Director Hydract Technology for GEA. “Because every valve movement is logged, the technology feeds valve-position data into a plant’s monitoring systems, strengthening process traceability and giving operators a continuous read on how each valve is performing. That same data supports condition-based maintenance.”

Precise regulation adds a second layer of value. Holding a valve exactly on setpoint supports continuous dosing and tighter standardization of the finished product. It also enables late product differentiation in selected parts of the process, such as blending fat grades at the filler or dosing fruit into a base yogurt. “In dairy these gains tend to sit in specific pockets of a plant rather than reshaping the whole line as they can in brewing. But we are actively exploring where they apply.”

Rethinking what a plant needs

What began as a way to move a valve with less energy has opened up a larger discussion about how a plant is built and what it can actually produce. From brewing to dairy, a simple move from air to water in GEA valve engineering, will give customers more options and deliver massive cost savings at a time when they are needed most.