Koskenkorva distillery is powered by a self sufficient bioenergy plant

Bioenergy power plant uses barley husk as fuel

Koskenkorva’s 10-megawatt bioenergy power plant, which began full-scale operations in January 2015, uses barley husk as its primary fuel. The barley husk is created in the distilling process when barley seeds are peeled for distillation. Before the bioenergy plant, the husk was basically waste – now it's precious fuel for the plant!

The bioenergy power plant makes it possible for the Koskenkorva distillery to utilize practically 100 percent of the barley grain in its year-round production of grain spirit and starch.

The use of renewable fuel helped the Koskenkorva distillery to cut down its fossil carbon dioxide emissions by over 50% percent. The plant’s self-sufficiency in terms of fuel in steam generation is over 60 percent.

In 2017, 206 million kilos of domestic barley were purchased for the Koskenkorva distillery.  That is almost 15 percent of the total Finnish barley harvest. One way of putting this colossal figure of nearly 200 million kilos into perspective is by imagining 17 trucks full of barley, delivered to the plant every weekday of the year.

In terms of the technology and fuels it uses, the bioenergy power plant is the first of its kind in Finland. The distillery is actively participating in the development of renewable field biomasses as an industrial processer of barley.