COOPID Irish Success Case: Carbery

The COOPID project has carried out a selection of 10 success cases within the bioeconomy across the EU primary sector. This is the one belonging to the Irish Success Case: Carbery. This case covers their overall business idea, main products, key characteristics, and plans for development of its business model.

Visit the success case

For privacy reasons YouTube needs your permission to be loaded.

Various languages available:

Webpage

Main facts

Founded in 1965
>700 employees
Cooperatively owned
Processes milk from 1200 dairy farmers in Ireland
Processes 596 million litres milk per year
Produces 12 million litres of bioethanol per year

Main products

Cheese
Whey
Flavoring ingredients
Bioethanol from whey
Biogas from process residues

Overall business idea

Cascading use of dairy feedstock business model through biorefining
Biorefinery produces cheese, whey and flavouring ingredients
Residual lactose stream converted to ethanol for alcohol, chemical and biofuel markets
Ethanol residues processed to produce biogas with energy used on site

Key characteristics of the success story

Cascading use of biomaterials
Circulation of nutrients
Technological innovation: technological push/market pull
Early adopter of new technologies and concepts
Cooperative business model – farmers benefit from sale of products
Location – local, geographical proximity
Rural job creation and upskilling
Sustainable land use creating resilient and carbon neutral farms

Plans for development

The Farm Zero C-initiative is targeting the world´s first climate-neutral and net-zero emissions dairy farm. The next steps include the implementation of the biorefining concept at farm level through conversion of fresh grass into value-added products including cattle feed fiber, protein concentrate for monogastric, prebiotics and grass whey for fertilizer or bioenergy.