Venus growers/Agricultural cooperative replacing fossil fuels with peach pits to utilize residual biomass and promote a circular economy
This practice addresses two main challenges: the continued dependence on fossil fuels with high and unstable costs and the potential to utilize agro-industrial waste.
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Detail description
The Venus Growers Agricultural Cooperative of Veria is an agro-industrial facility specializing in the processing and packaging of canned peaches, with an annual turnover of approximately €115 million. The company’s activity is entirely export-oriented, with key markets in Japan, the United States, and various European countries. The facility collects and processes roughly 50,000 tons of peaches annually from its 400 producer-members, with a production capacity of 400 tons per 8-hour shift and 1,200 tons in full 24-hour operation. Since the peach pit represents approximately 18% of the total fruit weight, the plant generates around 9,000 tons of by-product peach pits per year, which possess high calorific value and are suitable for energy recovery. Capitalizing on this available energy resource, the Cooperative initially upgraded and retrofitted its existing combustion systems to enable the use of peach pits as fuel. Subsequently, it replaced the conventional steam boilers—used for pasteurization, peeling, and other thermal processes-with biomass-fired boilers, significantly reducing dependence on conventional burners and lowering fuel-oil consumption. The new energy mix allows the plant to operate for 9 months using exclusively biomass (peach pits and supplementary pellets) and for 3 months using a combination of peach pits and fuel oil.
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Contribution detail info
- Project
- Location
- Greece
- Authors
- Christine Stavropoulou - INASO-PASEGES, Tina Papasideri - INASO-PASEGES
- Purpose
- Adopt innovative practices, Implement best practices, Other
- File type
- document
- Created on
- Jun 30, 2026
- Origin language
- English
- Official project website
- thERBN
- License
- CC BY
- Keywords