How Luxembourg’s Brasserie Nationale is cutting water use

Luxembourg’s Brasserie Nationale has taken huge steps to reduce its water consumption, aiming to cut it in half, to 2.4 litres per litre of beer, and to cut its pollution load by 90%.

Brasserie Nationale produces beers like Bofferding, Battin and Funck-Bricher, as well as Lodyss mineral water, and is based in Bascharage, in the Käerjeng municipality. It has implemented various sustainability actions aimed at efficiently managing its natural resources, and water consumption, investing some €20 million in improving its production processes over the past four decades. These efforts won the 2002 FEDIL Environment Prize and the European Commission’s European Environment Prize

The latest initiative is a €2.2 million investment in a wastewater treatment plant, backed by the Luxembourg government and Luxinnovation. The treatment plant can treat some 360,000 litres of wastewater every day and recycles them for reuse for cleaning and heat production.

The treatment plant developed by the Belgian company Pantarein, processes the wastewater through decantation, filtration and reverse osmosis. The result is that 70% of the water now is reused, used and treated. This reprocessed water is used in a separate water circuit, which has the sole function of cleaning, steam production and cooling.

“In the 1980s, we needed 12 litres of water to produce one litre of beer, while in 2021 we needed four. Our objective was not to rest on our laurels, but to half our consumption,” said Brasserie Nationale director Mathias Lentz, as he inaugurated the wastewater treatment plant in the presence of Käerjeng mayor Michel Wolter.

“It took us more than 40 years to go from 12 to 4.8 litres of water per litre of beer produced,” Lentz added. “Our new system will let us once again cut consumption by 50% of water, some 2.4 litres of water consumed for one litre of beer produced.”