From food waste to resource: Improving digestate quality
Smicon’s pre-treatment solutions remove up to 99,9% of contaminants, reduce disposal volumes up to 60%, and enhance input quality—boosting biogas yield and lowering disposal costs. In a sector where regulations are tightening, these figures don’t just represent environmental gains—they mean direct savings, better compliance, and new opportunities for valorisation.
Smicon’s food waste recycling technology
Smicon is a Dutch-based company specialising in recycling solutions to give food waste a second life. With over 45 years of experience, we support customers worldwide and have a great understanding of local market demands.
Our core technologies include:
• Depackaging machinery for separating organic content from packaged waste
• Grinders / Shredders that reduce particle size for faster hydrolysis and improved
microbial access and reduce transport and storage
• Purification machines such as Screw presses, Windshifters and Belt seperators to improve the quality of organic slurry
From standalone machines to turnkey installations, our solutions are tailored to fit a
variety of waste streams, whether that’s food production residues, supermarket returns, digestate from biogas plants or contaminated plastics.
Optimising feedstock: Why pre-treatment matters
Incoming waste streams vary widely in consistency and contamination. Smicon’s robust, customisable machines handle high volumes under continuous operation and reduce contamination—ideal for biogas plants dealing with food or municipal waste.
We design scalable solutions that maximise biogas yield, supporting clients from engineering to commissioning. With the result that Smicon has been shortlisted for ‘Sustainability and the Circular Economy’ in the British Renewable Energy Awards 2025.
The UK: From compliance to opportunity
The UK anaerobic digestion sector is facing both opportunities and pressure. New legislation, including stricter Environment Agency (EA) requirements for digestate and DEFRA’s push for separate food waste collection, is reshaping how the industry must operate.
Smicon’s systems directly support these market needs by:
• Improving the purity of the digestate, making it safer and easier to use on land
• Reducing the need for disposal, saving on transport fees
• Preparing feedstock more efficiently, resulting in higher yields
We’ve seen growing interest from UK clients in modular upgrades that enable compliance while improving plant performance. Take, for example, a long-standing Smicon customer in the biogas sector, operating a SMIMO depackaging line since 2014 and processing over 120,000 tonnes of food waste annually.
Want to learn more?
Our turn-key solutions are designed to adapt to your specific waste stream, site and sustainability goals—now and in the future. Smicon will be exhibiting at the World Biogas Expo (booth A45) and we will be present at other European trade shows this year.
Visit smicon.eu to get in touch to discuss your project or connect with us on LinkedIn to stay updated.
Smicon improves your process, to improve the future.
