GEA Niro is a Danish company that has been a part of the German GEA Group since 1993. GEA Niro specializes in the development, design and engineering of liquid and powder processing equipment for the manufacture of products in powder, granular or agglomerate form. The GEA Group is a world leader in process engineering, process equipment and plant engineering.

Spray dryers and coolers, fluid bed systems, freeze drying systems, solid/liquid extractors, evaporators, membrane filtration systems, agglomerators, and granulators are part of a comprehensive delivery programme marketed world-wide through an extensive network of GEA Niro and GEA companies and representatives.

Many of the world's leading manufacturers have chosen GEA Niro technology for their production of dairy and food products, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Some of these products are manufactured in a single plant, others in a fully engineered process line designed and installed by GEA Niro in collaboration with leading suppliers of auxiliary equipment.

Headquarter
GEA Niro
Gladsaxevej 305
P.O.Box 45
2860 Soeborg
Denmark

Telephone: + 45-39-545454
Telefax: + 45-39-545800
E-mail: niro@niro.dk
Vat no: DK10050715
CVR/SE no: 10050715

Executive summary
Management:

  • President & CEO: Anders Wilhjelm
  • Executive VP & CFO: Tom Wrensted
  • Executive VP: Niels Erik Olsen

Company history
A/S Niro Atomizer was founded in 1933 by Johan Ernst Nyrop, and quickly became a world leader in industrial drying, with spray drying, freeze drying, and fluid bed processing as core technologies. In the 1990’s Niro dropped "Atomizer" from the company name and in 1993, the Niro Group was acquired by the German GEA Group and began to co-operate closely with other GEA companies specializing in process technology and engineering. In July 2008 Niro A/S changed its name to GEA Niro.

A growing importance of controlling feed quality prior to drying brought GEA Niro into the concentration business and falling film evaporators became part of the scope of supply, primarily within the dairy industry. This involvement in pre-treatment has since grown to include extraction and membrane filtration. The start of this period saw the two-stage drying concept introduced to the dairy industry. Spray drying technology was also applied to air pollution control in 1978.

In 1989 the need to further develop particulate processing techniques led to GEA Niro upgrading its fluid bed technology and introducing new equipment for blending, coating, pelletizing, and de-dusting (to produce powdered, agglomerated or granular products of specific properties). During the 1990’s GEA Niro formed the GEA Niro Pharma Systems business unit in order to strengthen the presence of the Powder Technology Division in the pharmaceutical market.

Employees
GEA Niro is the headquarter for GEA Process Engineering, part of GEA Group AG in Bochum, Germany. The segment is represented in more than 40 countries and has about 4800 employees; 500 of these work for GEA Niro in Soeborg, Denmark. GEA is one of the leading stock-listed industrial groups in Germany.

Key business areas
GEA Niro’s daily operation is controlled through four main divisions: Chemical, Food & Dairy, Pharmaceutical and After Sales. GEA Niro also has special activities within environmental engineering, where the core technologies of GEA Niro are used in air pollution control and waste management.

Many of the world's leading manufacturers are GEA Niro customers, because the plants are design ed to abide by high performance standards and strict safety regulations.

The food and dairy industry
Serving the Food and Dairy industry continues to be a major component of GEA Niro’s business activities. The Food and Dairy Division supplies Food & Dairy equipment used to process a wide variety of products. GEA Niro offers either individual plants, such as Evaporators, Spray dryers, Fluid bed dryers, Extraction plants or Freeze dryers or as combinations of these, alternatively as complete process-lines on a turnkey basis.

Product applications have been within the industry segments of milk and whey products, carbohydrates, beverages, ingredients & flavours, protein foods, and fruit pulp and juices.
Product applications include: baby food, coffee and tea, egg products, juice, fruits & tomatoes, milk products, starch, whey products etc.

The chemical industry
Modern spray and fluid bed dryer equipment has gained a prominent position throughout the world's chemical industries, due to the growing importance of technology for powder and granular material production.

GEA Niro chemical processing equipment, such as spray and fluid bed plants, has the ability to handle any plant capacity requirement, irrespective of whether the product contains aqueous or organic volatiles, is toxic, or abrasive. This ability makes GEA Niro’s equipment ideal for both bulk and specialist chemical production.

GEA Niro has delive red thousands of drying plants to the chemical industry handling hundreds of different products in spray dryers, fluid bed dryers, spray fluidized dryers, flash dryers and spray dryer absorbers. Product applications include: ceramics, dyestuff & pigments, organic chemicals, polymers, detergent and air pollution control.

The pharmaceutical industry
For more than 70 years, GEA Niro has supplied drying plants used to produce powders and particulates in the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical processing equipment includes low capacity dryers designed for special potent powders as well as industrial size plants for continuous operations performed under strict hygienic standards. Product applications include analgesics, antibiotics, enzymes, proteins, vaccines and vitamins.

GEA Niro After Sales
The GEA Niro After Sales department supply our customers with the right spare parts and the right service anywhere in the world, when they need them, to keep the production running at maximum efficiency. GEA Niro does more than just supply spare parts. Through key component repair, overhaul service and preventive maintenance programmes, GEA Niro gives your installations the best possible care to avoid unnecessary work and to reduce non-schedule downtime, improve efficiency, enhance performance and increase the life time of the plant.

The technologies that GEA Niro provides

  • Spray drying
  • Fluid bed drying
  • Freeze drying

Spray Drying
No one knows more about the role of industrial spray drying than GEA Niro. With data gained from more than 70 years of experience, a reference list of some 10,000 plants across the globe and 30,000 test reports from our test centre, GEA Niro is equipped to engineer the properties our customers want into the products – and the processes needed to produce them. GEA Niro’s experience ranges over a wide variety of areas, including: food and dairy products, chemical and ceramic products, polymers and pharmaceutical products.

Spray drying is the most widely used industrial process for particle formation and drying. It is well suited to the continuous production of dry solids in powder, granulate or agglomerate particle form from liquid feedstocks. Feedstocks can include solutions, emulsions and pumpable suspensions. Spray drying is ideal, when the end-product must comply with precise quality standards regarding particle size distribution, residual moisture content, bulk density and particle morphology.

Fluid bed drying
Fluid bed dryers and fluid bed drying technology from GEA Niro have set the standard for many years. Both batch and continuous fluid bed drying systems can be supplied in a wide range of sizes. GEA Niro's fluid bed dryers process any particulate matter between 20 and 5000 microns, with source feeds that include dry or damp powders, filter cake or centrifuge cake.
GEA Niro supplies the following types of fluid bed drying: open fluid bed drying systems, closed cycle fluid bed drying systems, fluid bed spray granulation and rewet agglomeration.

Freeze drying
Freeze drying is a superior preservation method for a variety of food products and food ingredients. Atlas freeze dryers set world standards for design, operation and quality. The delivery programme includes plant sizes ranging from pilot scale to large industrial batches and continuous plants. GEA Niro is the world leading supplier of Atlas freeze dryer systems and equipment utilized by the coffee and food industry. GEA Niro designs and delivers complete drying plants for the coffee industry, and the leading coffee brands are in fact produced by GEA Niro equipment.