An innovative heat pump from Arkaya Energy cools freshly milked milk and channels the resulting waste heat directly into the cleaning water. England’s oldest Cheddar cheese dairy with  integrated farm, Barber’s Farmhouse Cheesemakers, saves around £70,000 a year in electricity costs as a result.

When it comes to energy supply, the family-run business relies on a technology that has only been available in this form since 2024. It was developed by the British start-up Arkaya Energy. The principle is as follows: milk leaves the cow warm and must then be cooled down quickly to keep it fresh. It is precisely this heat – which until now has mostly been wasted – that the system captures and pumps into a second circuit, which heats water to up to 92 degrees Celsius. Every dairy farm needs this hot water anyway to clean udders, milking equipment and tanks.

Until now, this has been handled by two separate systems: a chiller with an ice storage unit cooled the milk, whilst a separate electric or gas boiler heated the wash water. However, the waste heat recovery system does not replace the additional boiler needed to set the final temperature.

Arkaya’s milk heat pump combines both steps into a single unit. “It’s a predictable source of energy whenever milking takes place,” says company founder Kumo Sharma, explaining the core idea behind the technology. The four-person company is not revealing which refrigerant is used. The investment paid for itself in less than two years.