Sustainable Agri-Tech Facility Setting the Example

With a background in mechanical engineering within the agriculture industry, Christine Lewington owns and operates an agri-tech facility in Alberta, Canada called the Protein Islip Plant, or PIP for short. It officially opened in 2021 and she explains what she produces.

“We take peas, a yellow pea, they're hard. They look like little BB pellets, and we pull the proteins out of them. So many of your viewers or listeners might be able to hear you know, they've used pea protein before. It's found in protein shakes. It's found in many many like dairy alternatives”

Her company is the third-largest pea grower in the world. Lewington says her technology is unique with regard to how her facility is ran in an environmentally sustainable way.

“Sometimes people wonder, are we an energy company? Or are we a processing company because I speak probably more about the energy and what we're doing so we're working right now with the Alberta government. This facility, by the middle of next year earlier is going to be the first food processing on-site generated net zero carbon negative and what that means is we will generate all the power we need on all the firm's is the heat we need.

PIP uses solar wind and thermal sources for energy needed for food processing- and because food processing is the second most egregious industry to the environment, she says that she is providing knowledge sharing to help other food processing companies be more sustainable and efficient.