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Eden Mill partners with Earthshot prize finalist

15 October 2024 By Arabella Mileham

Boutique Scottish distillery Eden Mill is boosting its commitment to sustainability by partnering with Earthshot finalist and Scottish biotech company MiAlgae to reuse its whisky waste and help bring down overfishing.

The new long-term partnership will see the St Andrew-based independent distillery supply MiAlgae with its whisky effluent – a by-product of distillation – which can be used as to grow microalgae as an original and sustainable source of nutrient Omega-3.

Global demand for Omega3 has increased, but because it is traditionally sourced from wild-caught fish, this is helping to fuel unsustainable overfishing, with around 16 million tonnes of wild-caught oceanic fish annually.

MiAlgae has developed a solution to grow the micro-algae that fish feed on direct removing the need for wild-caught fish, which can operate at scale, cost-effectively. This innovation to reduce reliance on fishing and develop a circular-solution saw it named as a finalist for the prestigious Earthshot Prize, founded by the Prince of Wales to find solutions to environmental challenges facing the world. It has also recently secured £14 million in funding to accelerate its operations and scale up production to meet the global demand.

Eden Mill’s chief executive officer Rennie Donaldson, said the deal would make use of MiAlgae’s advanced and patented bio-technology to create the sustainable Omega-3 from the distillery’s waste.

“Sustainability is a hugely important part of our distillery plans, and for our business as a whole, so the team are excited to see a by-product given an environmentally friendly second-use,” Donaldson said.

Ahead of the completion of Eden Mill’s new distillery outside St Andrews early next year, the distillery has installed an effluent storage tank at its distillery in order to start supplying MiAlgae straight away.

Douglas Martin, founder and managing director at MiAlgae, said that in addition to using the nutrient-rich distillery by-products to grow the Omega-3-rich microalgae, the company would upcycle the effluent to clean water.

“[Eden Mills] shared commitment to sustainability aligns perfectly with our mission to advance biotechnology for good,” he said.

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