"The milk would have to be disposed of": Dairy boss is preparing for a gas delivery stop

Created: 07/22/2022, 22:42

By: Cornelia Schramm

A gas bottleneck would have a serious impact on milk production.

© Thomas Plettenberg

In an emergency, a gas delivery stop would also have serious effects on the milk industry.

In an interview, Bernhard Pointner shows his precautions.

Piding – Dairies need a lot of energy to pasteurize milk and clean machines with steam.

A gas supply stop could bring the entire industry to a standstill overnight.

The Dairy Association Milch.Bayern is therefore calling on the federal government to count them and their supply chain as critical infrastructure in an emergency and to continue to supply them with gas.

Bernhard Pointner (45) is the managing director of the Berchtesgadener Land dairy – and is now making provisions on his own, just in case.

Let's talk about the worst case scenario: Tomorrow the gas will run out - what will happen in the Berchtesgadener Land dairy?

We need about an hour – then the dairy continues to run on heating oil, even in the event of a power failure, via a few small and two large emergency power generators.

Did you convert to oil because of the war?

The Ukraine war hadn't even started then.

Nine months ago, a neighboring dairy was the victim of a cyber attack.

That is why we have dealt with crisis scenarios.

A common one is that the power could be out for a longer period of time.

A dairy like ours consumes around 4,000 kilowatts per hour, which is why we have set up our own emergency power supply.

Dairy boss Bernhard Pointner is worried about a possible gas bottleneck.

© Dairy BGL

Gas delivery stop is imminent: How is the dairy preparing for it?

In addition, there could even be a gas delivery stop now...

My predecessors in management and the technical director came from the post-war generation.

In the past, you have made sure that you are not dependent on just one energy source.

Our steam boilers, for example, could always have been operated with gas and fuel oil.

Luckily we didn't have to start from scratch and could simply upgrade - and perfect the system with a few investments.

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Which one?

In addition to the two emergency power generators, each of which is as big as a forty-ton truck and consumes around 600 liters of heating oil per hour, we have bought our own truck for heating oil and installed tanks on the site.

Now we can order and collect oil from refineries ourselves.

Last week we bought one million liters of oil in the port of Hamburg for 1.2 million euros.

The train takes it to Kiefersfelden, where we pick it up.

We could use it as diesel for the milk trucks, as heating oil for the emergency power generators.

How else do you prepare for a gas stop?

The raw materials would not be enough.

Two employees have passed the dangerous goods test to be allowed to drive the truck.

We also need packaging material.

We can process as much milk as we want if we then can't pack it.

That's why we rented an area to store Euro pallets, foil, plastic and glass empties.

We also have disinfectants and cleaning agents in stock for a longer period of time.

If the chemical industry were to stop working, we would no longer be able to clean our systems.

How long would your deposits last?

We could keep the dairy running for 45 days with the stored one million liters of oil.

We only have 3000 kilowatt hours of electricity at our disposal, but with a few adjustments to the process we could continue to produce as before.

We are driven by two considerations: On the one hand, we want to be a reliable partner for the farmers from whom we obtain our milk - and on the other hand, we want to ensure our social mission of providing food.

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Horror scenario with gas stop

The Dairy Association cites alarming figures: If there were a gas stop, milk would no longer be collected from farms after twelve hours - two days later the supermarket shelves would be empty...

To put it sharply, the scenario will of course occur sooner or later.

Supermarkets also have refrigerated warehouses, but the buying behavior of customers would change quickly - we've already seen the panic buying of sunflower oil.

How many farmers would be affected in your case?

We collect raw milk from 1800 farmers every other day - in an area from the Watzmann to the Zugspitze, partly also in Austria.

In the dairy we can temporarily store six million liters in storage tanks.

If the milk is not processed further, it becomes thick and curdles.

But if you can't produce without energy, you don't fill tanks to let the milk rot.

What would that mean?

We would have to tell farmers to keep their milk.

Where to put it?

No manure pit is big enough to dispose of milk there for days or even weeks.

Imagine the stench!

The milk would have to be disposed of in biogas plants, but there is not enough capacity for that.

It's a horrifying thought that the milk would have to be thrown away.

But if left unprocessed, it spoils too quickly.

And the processing is energy-intensive: according to the law, raw milk has to be pasteurized to 72 to 74 degrees and UHT milk has to be ultra-high-heated to 150 degrees - that's why the energy consumption in dairies is so enormous.

Imminent gas supply stop: are prices going up?

Do you think there are alternatives to oil?

We expanded what we had.

In the Bavarian Forest there are large dairies that work with wood chip systems.

There is a lot of wood and, above all, space because of the possible formation of mold spores - not here.

We are relatively a small dairy and process around one million liters of raw milk into around 150 products every day.

This corresponds to 0.8 percent of what is milked in Germany.

Heating oil is expensive - and even more so when gas is stopped.

Are you raising your prices?

We have already made moderate price increases.

But customers already have less money - and what good does it do us if the products stop because they are too expensive?

An example: The butter now costs 2.79 euros instead of 2.49 euros.

We can still cushion some additional costs.

But in such an energy crisis, a new price level is needed at some point, and everyone must be aware of that.

If we only worked with heating oil, we would have two million euros in additional costs per month.

Is that worth it?

That pays off for the 1800 farmers behind us - and also for our employees.

But that's why it's only a contingency plan.

Hopefully.

Interview: Cornelia Schramm

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