9 Valorisation of whey
A tale of two Nordic dairies
Simon Bolwig, Andreas Brekke, Louise Strange
and Nhat Strøm-Andersen
9.1 Introduction
Have you eaten Greek yoghurt recently? For every teaspoon of Greek
yoghurt you eat, two teaspoons of surplus material are produced. This byproduct, known as acid whey, has become a waste disposal issue for dairies
around the world following a boom in the demand for Greek yoghurt. This
development mirrors, although at a smaller scale, that of sweet whey, which
is a by- product of white hard cheese production. Whey is a very strong pollutant, with a biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) 175-fold higher than the
typical sewage effluent (Smithers, 2008). With increasingly strict environmental regulation of industrial wastes, disposing of whey as waste has become
both difficult and costly as volumes have increased and have become more
concentrated in larger production units. Together with a growing societal
focus on the circular economy, these environmental pressures have forced the
dairy industry to rethink the way it manages its whey side stream (ibid.).
There are valuable substances in whey that are possible to valorise, including functional proteins and peptides, lipids, vitamins, minerals and lactose
(Smithers, 2008). In the case of sweet whey, dairies around the world have in
recent decades developed technologies, processing capacities, products and
new business models for utilising these substances. A strong driver has been
the rapid growth in global markets for food ingredients, including wheybased protein powders, which are ‘among the winners of several new nutrition trends and food developments’ (Vik & Kvam, 2017, p. 336). Thus whey
has become an important nutritional and functional ingredient for highquality foods (NutritionInsight, 2018) and the global whey protein industry
has been estimated to grow by 12–14% per year (Kjer, 2013).
This strong market trend is related to rising populations and incomes,
especially in emerging economies. But it is also strongly driven by the rise of
‘functional nutritionism’, which refers to the increased engineering and
re engineering of food in coevolution with changing corporate strategies,
trends in food, diets and health, and new food and nutrition policies (Scrinis,
2013, 2016; Vik & Kvam, 2017). An indication of this trend is the large and
growing market for functional food ingredients, i.e. probiotics, proteins and
A tale of two Nordic dairies
Simon Bolwig, Andreas Brekke, Louise Strange
and Nhat Strøm-Andersen
9.1 Introduction
Have you eaten Greek yoghurt recently? For every teaspoon of Greek
yoghurt you eat, two teaspoons of surplus material are produced. This byproduct, known as acid whey, has become a waste disposal issue for dairies
around the world following a boom in the demand for Greek yoghurt. This
development mirrors, although at a smaller scale, that of sweet whey, which
is a by- product of white hard cheese production. Whey is a very strong pollutant, with a biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) 175-fold higher than the
typical sewage effluent (Smithers, 2008). With increasingly strict environmental regulation of industrial wastes, disposing of whey as waste has become
both difficult and costly as volumes have increased and have become more
concentrated in larger production units. Together with a growing societal
focus on the circular economy, these environmental pressures have forced the
dairy industry to rethink the way it manages its whey side stream (ibid.).
There are valuable substances in whey that are possible to valorise, including functional proteins and peptides, lipids, vitamins, minerals and lactose
(Smithers, 2008). In the case of sweet whey, dairies around the world have in
recent decades developed technologies, processing capacities, products and
new business models for utilising these substances. A strong driver has been
the rapid growth in global markets for food ingredients, including wheybased protein powders, which are ‘among the winners of several new nutrition trends and food developments’ (Vik & Kvam, 2017, p. 336). Thus whey
has become an important nutritional and functional ingredient for highquality foods (NutritionInsight, 2018) and the global whey protein industry
has been estimated to grow by 12–14% per year (Kjer, 2013).
This strong market trend is related to rising populations and incomes,
especially in emerging economies. But it is also strongly driven by the rise of
‘functional nutritionism’, which refers to the increased engineering and
re engineering of food in coevolution with changing corporate strategies,
trends in food, diets and health, and new food and nutrition policies (Scrinis,
2013, 2016; Vik & Kvam, 2017). An indication of this trend is the large and
growing market for functional food ingredients, i.e. probiotics, proteins and