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MillerCoors' Trenton Brewery Upcycling Wastewater Into Fish, Animal Feed

MillerCoors’ Trenton Brewery in Ohio will now also produce fish and animal feed.Thanks to a partnership with biotech company Nutrinsic, wastewater from MillerCoors’ beer-making process will now enter Nutrinsic’s sustainable protein production facility co-located at the brewery’s Water Reclamation Facility. The biotech company says the wastewater will become a feedstock for ProFloc™, a high-quality protein ingredient for use in fish and animal nutrition. ProFloc is produced using patented technology that upcycles nutrients that would otherwise be undervalued or discarded, making it a sustainable protein source for all types of aquatic and terrestrial animal feeds.

By Sustainable Brands | Published 9 years ago | About a 2 minute read

MillerCoors’ Trenton Brewery in Ohio will now also produce fish and animal feed.

Thanks to a partnership with biotech company Nutrinsic, wastewater from MillerCoors’ beer-making process will now enter Nutrinsic’s sustainable protein production facility co-located at the brewery’s Water Reclamation Facility. The biotech company says the wastewater will become a feedstock for ProFloc™, a high-quality protein ingredient for use in fish and animal nutrition. ProFloc is produced using patented technology that upcycles nutrients that would otherwise be undervalued or discarded, making it a sustainable protein source for all types of aquatic and terrestrial animal feeds.

“MillerCoors cares deeply about sustainability in all aspects of the brewing process, and believes waste is a resource out of place,” said Denise Quinn, VP of MillerCoors Trenton Brewery. “That’s why we’re proud to partner with Nutrinsic, to turn what was previously a waste stream into something of value.”

MillerCoors – SABMiller's joint venture with Molson Coors – is also working to be more efficient when it comes to water use – the brewer announced in 2014 that it now uses an average of 3.48 barrels of water to brew one barrel of beer, a 9.1 percent decrease from 2012.

Brewers around the world are becoming increasingly savvy about putting their waste to good use, especially when it comes to producing power: In 2013, the Hofmühl Brewery in Eichstätt, Bavaria announced that a combination of solar and bioenergy – generated from brewer grains, yeast and other typically wasted matter created during beer production – will make it completely self-sufficient by 2018; in 2014, Sonoma County-based Bear Republic Brewing Company installed a bioelectric system at its Cloverdale brewery to treat wastewater and generate biogas that was expected to generate enough clean heat and electricity to eliminate more than 50 percent of the site’s electricity use; and earlier this year, Waste2Watergy, a Corvallis startup formed at Oregon State University, has secured a $225,000 federal grant to advance technology that cleans organics from brewery wastewater while producing electricity.