The Daily Standard
Story Archive
PurposeEnergy officials have been working with Danone for several years on the development of the biodigester facility in Minster.
MINSTER - A New England company is bringing new energy technology to Minster which would help fuel a planned multimillion expansion at the local Danone yogurt plant.
PurposeEnergy, headquartered in Windham, New Hampshire, is building an anaerobic digester facility on Columbia Drive in the Route 66 Industrial Park to treat organic residual food production waste from the Danone yogurt plant located across State Route 66.
Sean O'Neill, PurposeEnergy vice president for development, said construction will be complete in November. After a several-month plant readiness period, it will be operational by late spring.
Danone officials announced plans last month for the construction of a 48,000-square-foot facility expansion that will include a new production line and upgrading existing production lines. The expansion is expected to add up to 30 new jobs.
New Hampshire-based PurposeEnergy is building this anaerobic digester plant in the Route 66 Industrial Park in Minster to process food production waste from the nearby Danone yogurt plant.
O'Neill explained that the food residual waste will be piped from Danone's facility to the PurposeEnergy plant for processing.
"There are three outputs from the plant, 1) water cleaned up to the standard for the Minster wastewater treatment plant; 2) gas, which will be piped to the Danone plant and put to use in the production of yogurt and related products; and 3) fertilizer," he said.
O'Neill said the fertilizer "is basically dirt with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium."
The gas produced by the digester "is a renewable energy source - every BTU of gas that we make from the waste is a BTU of fossil fuel that does not get burned," O'Neill said.
PurposeEnergy officials have been working with Danone for several years on the development of the biodigester facility.
"This is our first project with them (Danone) but we plan to do more with them in other places," O'Neill said.
PurposeEnergy is investing in excess of $40 million in the Minster facility, according to O'Neill. All of the funds were private.
"The federal investment tax credit was extremely important for projects like the Minster one, but it has been eliminated for future projects," he said. "Now that the credit is gone it is harder for us to direct dollars into critical private infrastructure like this project."
"The PurposeEnergy plant will allow Danone to add more production and buy more milk from farmers in the region," O'Neill said.
"We're providing two services," he added. "We're taking in their waste and providing them with a part of their gas."
O'Neill noted his company's facilities also play a role in reducing the amount of waste that ends up in landfills.
"Our plant is going to take the burden off the wastewater plants and the landfills," he said. "We like to keep things out of the landfills. Thirty percent of waste that goes into landfills is organic, so it just takes up room and reduces the life of the landfill."
"We think of it as private infrastructure," O'Neill said.
The PurposeEnergy project will help Danone with its planned expansion in Minster while also eliminating the village's need for a wastewater treatment plant expansion.
Minster village administrator Don Harrod said the PurposeEnergy facility will delay the need to expand the local wastewater treatment plant.
"It will improve the quality of the effluent that will be sent to us," he said of the PurposeEnergy facility. "It will eliminate the need right now to expand our wastewater treatment plant. … We may still need to expand the plant in the future as the village continues to grow."
"We are often asked if the plant will smell - it will not," O'Neill said. "Some of our digesters are built next to breweries with tasting rooms and another is next to a pizza place - they do not cause any odor issues."
O'Neill said while Danone is the company's main customer for the Minster facility, it will serve other businesses in the future. "They are our anchor client, but there will be other clients," he said, noting the first priority after starting operations will be to accommodate Danone's requirements.
PurposeEnergy owns and operates the anaerobic digesters.
"We're going to be part of the Minster community; we're not going to build it and walk away," O'Neill commented. The PurposeEnergy plant in Minster will employ six workers, he said.
PurposeEnergy built its first anaerobic digester in 2008 in South Burlington, Vermont.
The company has since built a number of biodigesters around the nation for breweries, ice cream factories (Ben and Jerry's is a client) and other food processors, according to its website.
PurposeEnergy officials have been working with Danone for several years on the development of the biodigester facility in Minster.
