Grassa helps farmer, nature and climate with grass biorefinery

The Netherlands is full of grass, but apart from feeding cows we do little else with it. Start-up Grassa is going to change all that. By refining grass, the Netherlands will need to import less soya from cut-down virgin rainforests, nitrogen and CO₂ emissions from farms are reduced, manure surpluses are eliminated and cows get easier-to-digest fodder. With the new pilot plant, the dairy industry saves 9.5 megatons of CO₂.

Refining oil to make petrol and other important raw materials and fuels, that's something we know about. But grass? Yet that is exactly what Grassa does. By pressing, heating and filtering the grass, the biorefinery of the Limburg-based company extracts proteins, sugars, minerals and alternative fertilisers from the grass. The grass that remains, so-called decomposed grass, is more sustainable and goes back to the farmer as roughage for his cows. This grass is easier for the cow to digest than grass silage. As a result, its manure contains 30 per cent less ammonia and 30 per cent less phosphate, and the cow emits 10 to 15 per cent less CO₂ in the form of methane.

Protein from grass makes soya imports superfluous

The proteins from the grass are an alternative to the soya that is currently fed to pigs and chickens and could eventually – if the law permits it in the future – be processed in plant-based food for consumers. This can reduce soya imports from areas where cultivation displaces food production or damages local ecosystems through deforestation and water use. That is why the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality assigns the company an important role in the Nationale Eiwitstrategie, which aims to reduce dependence on soya imports. "What the cow puts in the manure, we take out. Through the process of Grassa, every hectare of grassland produces 50 percent more food. From a quarter of the grassland in the Netherlands, we can produce enough protein to meet the total national demand for soya," says director Rieks Smook of Grassa.

Grass preacher wants to persuade farmers

There is plenty of grass; one third of the Netherlands, approximately one million hectares, consists of grassland according to the CBS. That is not the problem: The challenge is to get farmers to give up their grass to Grassa, in exchange for feed to meet future standards and a payment for the proteins produced and sold. In addition, the climate impact of the agricultural sector is significantly reduced by helping to reduce soya imports. "Instead of being a hedge preacher, I sometimes feel like a grass preacher," says Smook. "I feel like a missionary who has to convince farmers to deliver their grass to me, instead of cutting it themselves, letting it dry and ensiling it for the winter. I have to convince them that I can extract important elements to improve the grass as fodder for their cows. In fact, we make sustainable grass. That seems simple, but it is their basic raw material for milk and meat. I am sure we can persuade them, but it will take a few years."

From mobile trailer to pilot plant

Trials with a biorefinery on a mobile trailer at farmers in Friesland and Ireland and tests at Wageningen University (WUR) demonstrated that the technique works. A feasibility study also showed that the technology of the refining process is theoretically, economically and technically feasible. Although the person who devised the technique, Johan Sanders, emeritus professor of plant production chains at Wageningen University, thought that refining should take place locally at the farmer, Smook has abandoned it. "Grass consists of 85 per cent water and Sanders believes that you should not start lugging water around. But then you run into capacity problems and refining is not commercially viable," he says. That is why there is now a pilot plant in Afferden, Limburg. Whereas the trailer could handle 1 tonne of grass per hour, the pilot plant can handle 3 tonnes per hour. Grassa wants to build a large commercial plant in five to ten years' time that can process 32 tonnes of grass per hour, some 10,000 to 12,000 hectares per year. It will consist of four 8-tonne production lines. When fully operational, the agricultural sector will save 9.5 megatons of CO₂ annually in the total protein chain.

Ready for new investments

To make that step, Grassa needs new investors. To find them, the start-up received help and support from the Fastlane programme of Invest-NL. Smook: "We turned out to be a difficult case for them because we want to make an entire sector more sustainable with thousands of independent entrepreneurs, whom we have to convince to make a change in their basic raw material." The question was: how does Grassa get through its so-called Death Valley, the phase in which most start-ups fail because hardly any money is made yet and investments are still needed. Invest-NL looked critically at the business model and the required investments and put Grassa on the right track. "We are now ready for the next phase and can start approaching investors to scale up," says Smook.