Food production sites must now comply with numerous requirements in the sanitary, economic and environmental domains:

• more and more stringent HSE regulations
• increased need to control production costs, optimize industrial performance and remain competitive in the face of pressure from the retail circuits
• consumer sensitivity and awareness of brands and their underlying guarantees in terms of quality, food safety and respect of the environment

Water is one of the first ingredients used when manufacturing food, as process water for beverages, ready meals or dairy products. It is also a processing aid used throughout the process (cleaning water, transport water), as well as an energy utility when used as steam or for refrigeration (boiler feed water, cooling water, ice for preservation).

The production of specification quality water for the process and treatment of resulting wastewater are crucial activities in the food industry. Veolia Water provides this industry with innovative technological solutions and offers a range of services, from facility maintenance and on-site technical assistance to the complete management of the industrial water cycle. Veolia Water currently operates and guarantees the reliability of water and/or wastewater treatment facilities in several hundred food plants. Industrial applications are as varied as breweries or non alcoholic beverages, dairy or meat products, fruit and vegetables processing, confectionery, food ingredients and additives, as well as the entire agro-industry.

Health risk prevention is a primary concern of the food industry.
This requires controlling process water quality in its different uses, whether as a food constituent or simply in contact with food.

Veolia Water offers:

>> a broad range of technologies necessary to produce the required quality for the different water usages:

• process water of drinking grade quality obtained by pre-treating (micro, ultra, nano-filtrations, disinfection...) all types of resources, or even by seawater desalination in arid regions
• utility water implementing softening, demineralization, reverse osmosis, chemical conditioning or specific treatment processes, sometimes resulting from recycled wastewater treated downstream

>> as well as after-market services allowing our customers to optimize the selection and performance of technologies: raw water analysis and qualification of client's needs, pilot tests, operators' training, 24/7 technical assistance, and customer services.

As the world leader in water purification solutions in the beverage industry, Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies has designed and built thousands of facilities throughout the world.

By combining the expertise of several of the group's entities, Veolia Environnement also provides comprehensive prevention against Legionella proliferation in order to guarantee the health and safety of staff working on sites equipped with cooling towers or domestic hot water systems. This offer includes health diagnostic and contamination control at critical points, disinfection and compliance of sensitive systems.

Food and Beverage wastewater, generally highly biodegradable, is often discharged, once pretreated on site, into municipal sewerage systems. The European legislation on industrial wastewater treatment (IPPC Directive) and the protection of aquatic environments (Water Framework Directive) demands more and more stringent discharge compliance levels - and therefore treatment levels. In this context, an increasing number of Food and Beverage sites are setting up their own wastewater treatment plants, thereby anticipating the risk of disconnection from municipal sewerage systems.

Veolia Water meets these needs with a comprehensive offer, including "turnkey" design and build of complete treatment plants, capacity extension or revamping of existing facilities. In these projects, Veolia Water uses advanced technologies: treatment of wastewater with high grease content (Biolix™, Agira™), specific nitrogen treatment, or methanization of biomass allowing energy recovery from biogas. Veolia Water also commits to optimize plant performance and reduce associated costs through outsourcing contracts.

To date, Veolia Water is operating several hundred wastewater treatment plants servicing Food and Beverage, for a treated wastewater volume amounting to tens of thousands of cubic meters each day.

For treatment facilities operating below capacity, merchant plant solutions may also be established with neighboring industrial facilities.

Water resource depletion and related price increases encourage the food industry to explore new solutions aimed at minimizing water intake from the natural environment and pollution discharge, without affecting production.

>> Upstream, Veolia Water helps its clients diversify their raw water supply sources and guarantee sustainability:

• protection of existing catchment areas
• borehole installation, operation and maintenance
• voluntary water saving plans

>> Downstream, treated wastewater can also constitute an alternative resource, resulting in up to 30% water saving. Veolia Water is providing customers with reuse solutions allowing treated effluents to be utilized for utility purposes: washing of external areas or trucks, fire protection, make-up utility water. Recycling solutions primarily include membrane technologies: micro or ultrafiltration, MBR™ and reverse osmosis, along with final UV disinfection.

In certain regulatory or temporary usage restriction conditions, Veolia Water can also provide solutions for the ultimate concentration of specific effluents with heavy pollution loads by evaporation or crystallization, avoiding any final liquid discharge (ZLD solutions: "Zero Liquid Discharge").

Wastewater treatment development and continuous improvement of treatment technologies contribute to increasing the production of wastewater sludge volumes. In addition, the regulatory framework supervising sludge treatment and disposal is toughening and progressively restricting current agricultural recycling channels (land spreading or composting).

In this complex technical and regulatory environment, Veolia Water is providing its Food and Beverage clients with integrated solutions to:

• Minimize sludge volumes at source, by implementing wastewater treatment lines producing little sludge (methanization) or by anaerobic digestion.
• Treat sludge to optimize storage, transport and disposal conditions in collective centers: thickening, drying, dewatering, digestion
• Improve sludge quality by stabilization (liming, Saphyr™) and sanitization (BioTherm™, BioPasteur™) in order to facilitate future recovery
• Recover sludge for agriculture in the form of fertilizers, in partnership with SEDE Environnement, or recover energy by incineration (Pyrofluid™), total mineralization (OVH Athos™) or co-incineration with household waste (Pyromix™).

Veolia Water is currently recovering 2/3 of the biological sludge generated by its Food and Beverage clients' wastewater treatment plants, as well as all fat wastes produced on site.

60% of food industries claim this is their main concern. Whether resulting from foodstuff soaking, cleaning, rinsing or maceration, food and beverage wastewater has a high organic content, which can constitute a source of alternative energy via anaerobic treatment. Other biomass produced on site, including sludge from primary and/or secondary wastewater treatment, greases and other by-products (stillages, oil cakes, dregs, bagasse ...) can be (co-)digested by anaerobic processes. In the current legal and economic environment, supporting renewable energies and subsidizing "green power", energy recovery from biogas is becoming a "must".

Veolia Water helps its clients implement wastewater or sludge anaerobic treatment processes with thermal and/or electrical recovery of the biogas produced by including:

• Analysis of treatment requirements and methanogenic potential of local biomass resource, search for additional volumes.
• Design, build and operate on-site or off-site treatment processes
• Installation, management and funding of treatment and energy recovery assets (boilers, CHP units) in partnership with Dalkia.

Veolia currently manages over one hundred wastewater and sludge anaerobic treatment plants throughout the world, a significant number of which carry out biogas energy recovery.

It is difficult to admit that wastewater or sludge treatment facilities, designed for environmental protection, can themselves generate nuisances (visual, noise or odors).

With a long-term commitment to the comfort and health of on-site staff and people residing near Food and Beverage plants, often taken over by urban sprawling, Veolia Water has mastered the art of landscape integration and the realization of compact structures, with highly efficicient air treatment systems. Perfectly adapted to the odorous molecules sometimes produced by on-site installations, these systems use chemical (Aquilair™), or biological (Alizair™) processes. They are sometimes completed by systems measuring and analyzing odor plumes (OdoWatch™) in order to diagnose, control and minimize the odor.

Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies offers a wide range of technological solutions to meet the specific needs of the Food & Beverage Industry.

• Process Water
• Effluent Treatment
• Recycle/ Reuse
• Sludge Treatment
• Odor Treatment