Imagine your food factory needs a lot of heat — for drying ham, distilling spirits, boiling sugar, or making wine. Right now, you burn gas or oil for that. This project plugged solar thermal panels into four real factories across Europe and built the software tools to make it work reliably. The result: up to 40% of the heat came from the sun, cutting fuel bills and carbon emissions at places like Martini & Rossi and RAR Group.
Food and agro-industry factories burn enormous amounts of fossil fuel for process heat — drying, distilling, boiling, fermenting. Energy costs are rising, carbon regulations are tightening, and most factory owners have no reliable way to evaluate whether solar thermal could replace part of that fuel without disrupting production.
The project delivered a replication tool for techno-economic feasibility assessment, a control tool (decision support system) for managing solar-conventional heat integration, a comprehensive guide for designing and operating solar heat systems, and a capacity building program. All were validated at 4 industrial demo sites with real food production lines.
If you are a distillery or winery spending heavily on gas for heating — this project demonstrated solar thermal integration at Martini & Rossi (spirits distillation) and RODA Wineries (fermentation and stabilization), achieving up to 40% solar fraction. Their replication tool lets you assess feasibility for your own site before investing.
If you are a meat processor running energy-intensive drying chambers — this project piloted solar heat at ABC Industries for ham drying. The control tool (a decision support system) optimizes when to use solar versus backup fuel, so your production schedule stays uninterrupted while cutting fossil fuel use.
If you are a sugar producer dealing with rising energy costs for boiling operations — this project demonstrated solar thermal at RAR Group for sugar boiling. The comprehensive design guide and feasibility tool they developed let you evaluate whether solar heat fits your specific production process and climate zone.
The project developed a replication tool specifically for assessing the techno-economic feasibility of solar heat integration at individual sites. While exact costs depend on your location, heat demand, and scale, this tool gives you a site-specific estimate before committing capital. Contact the consortium for a feasibility assessment.
This was tested at full industrial scale across 4 real production sites: Martini & Rossi (spirits distillation), ABC Industries (ham drying), RAR Group (sugar boiling), and RODA Wineries (wine fermentation and stabilization). The target was 4.04 GWh of solar heat production per year across these sites.
The project produced a replication tool for feasibility assessment, a control tool (decision support system) for operations, and a comprehensive design guide. These were developed by a consortium of 19 partners. Contact the coordinator CIRCE (Spain) to discuss access and licensing terms for these tools.
Across the 4 demo sites, the project targeted saving 403 cubic meters of fossil fuels and 1,145 tonnes of CO2-equivalent per year, while achieving up to 40% solar fraction. Your actual savings depend on your current fuel mix and heat demand.
The project built a control tool — a decision support system — specifically to manage the interplay between solar input and process demand. It optimizes when to draw from solar storage versus conventional backup, so your production line keeps running regardless of weather.
This was an Innovation Action (the EU's highest deployment-readiness funding type) with 14 industrial partners and 7 SMEs. The 4 demo sites cover distillation, drying, boiling, and fermentation — representative processes found across the entire agro-food sector.
The project ran from April 2018 to June 2023 — over 5 years of development and demonstration. This extended timeline allowed for multi-season testing of solar performance across different climatic conditions at the 4 sites in Spain, France, Portugal, and Italy.
The SHIP2FAIR consortium is heavily industry-driven: 14 out of 19 partners come from industry (74%), with 7 SMEs and 4 research organizations providing technical backbone. The value chain is well covered — solar technology providers (TVP, ISG), engineering firms (RINA-C, SOLID), a major utility (EDF), and end-user food companies (Martini & Rossi, ABC Industries, RAR Group, RODA Wineries) who tested the technology in their own factories. The partnership spans 8 countries (AT, BE, CH, DE, ES, FR, IT, PT), giving broad European market relevance. This is not an academic exercise — it's a deployment-oriented consortium where the companies that need solar heat are sitting at the same table as those who build and install it.
CIRCE Foundation (Spain) coordinated the project. SciTransfer can facilitate an introduction to the right technical contact.
Want to know if solar process heat could cut your factory's fuel costs by up to 40%? We can connect you with the SHIP2FAIR team for a site assessment — contact SciTransfer.
