Economic and Ecological Profitability of the Use of Whey in Dairy and Food Industry

Introduction - In contemporary dairy industry, especially in the cheese or casein production, only 10-20% of processed milk is directly availed for produced cheese and casein, while 80-90% of raw milk is transferred into the main by-product, whey. Due to insufficient utilization, whey was becoming the major polluter, what is entirely inconsistent to its potentials as a raw material. Whey is an excellent source of high quality proteins, minerals, vitamins and lactose that can be used in daily nutrition, or transformed throughout the different technological processes into the numerous valuable food products. Aims - The main goal of paper is to test the possibility of carrot juice use in the production of functional fermented drinks based on whey, as well as to estimate the possibility of inclusion of its production within the process of cheese production. Materials and methods - Based on previous laboratory tests, conducted at the Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy - Belgrade University, that were focused on increase of utilization of available raw materials in dairy industry, dairy drink based on cow whey and carrot juice has been established. Later, according to realistic data (input values), using the SuperPro Designer program (software), the simulation and economical evaluation of the establishment of created fermented drink production process was done. Results and discussion - Integrated production process of cow cheese that includes production of fermented drink based on whey and carrot juice has shown greater economic sustainability compared to basic process of cheese production. Establishment of mentioned production process could enables extra short payback period (PP), (0.15 years), as well as high level of net present value (NPV), (10,464.04 x 106 US$) and internal rate of return (IRR), (384.61%). Besides, inclusion of line for beverage production within the process of cheese production enables achieving of improved quality product that can be in line to most requirements of highly sophisticated consumers, increasing the totally achieved profit (economic efficiency) of dairy industry. Conclusion - The production of functional fermented whey-based beverages represents one of the efficient alternatives related to better whey utilization. Created type of functional beverage production covered by unique production process leads to the utilization of all whey potentials that has as a raw material, material which also represents biologically strong pollutant. So, besides removal of certain quantity of whey from environment, it could be got a cheap, nutritionally valuable, healthy and fully natural product