The Franklinton plant which produces enzymes primarily for the North American market was established in 1978. In 1994, there was a major expansion including a granulation tower for coating enzymes used in detergents. 334 people were employed at year-end.

"In 1997, our major focus was on water conservation. We promised the local authority that when we expanded our recovery unit in 1997, we would not increase our water consumption. We succeeded and in 1998 we aim to reduce water consumption by 5%."
From the left: Mike Elder, Director of Quality, Customer Service & Logistics, Paul Rehder, Director of Engineering Services & Environmental Operations, and Steve Stadelmann, Department Manager for Waste Management. All three are members of Novo Nordisk's International Environmental Network.

Major impacts
Large amounts of raw materials, energy and potable water are used in manufacturing. The main discharges are process waste water and spent biomass, both of which are recycled on agricultural land. The spent biomass is used to fertilize fields on 200 local farms and the waste water is used to irrigate agricultural crops grown on our own land.

Breaches of regulatory limit values
Five of our 50 irrigation sites exhibited ground water nitrate concentrations slightly higher than the regulatory limit of 10 mg/l. This lead to a total of 14 breaches in 1997. This has been a problem since 1995 when nitrates were first detected in the ground water. However, in 1997, this trend has been reversed and improvements have been achieved.

One of the successful measures in 1997 was to introduce a more intensive crop rotation in order to increase the uptake of nutrients. A second measure is the building of a waste water treatment plant at an investment of USD 1 million. When the plant is operational in 1998, it will reduce nitrogen concentrations in waste water by approx. 60%. Thirdly, the amount of land available for irrigation was increased by 50% in 1997, allowing less waste water to be irrigated on areas with high ground water nitrate concentrations.

Complaints
Five of a total of nine complaints concerned odour from our waste water treatment plant. As part of the expansion of this plant in May 1998, an improved aeration system will be operating and this will reduce bad odours. Another odour complaint was due to equipment failure one weekend when spent biomass was not neutralized with lime.

Environmental focus
There has been a continued focus on water conservation. Water from the production process is relatively clean, enabling it to be reused in certain process stages that do not require pure water, e.g. in the cooling tower and for rinsing heavily soiled equipment. The target for 1998 is to reduce water consumption by a further 5% from the 1997 daily average of 2,780 m³ (735,000 US gallons).

Water recycling

Franklinton data

Araucária, Brazil