In March 2024, Agrar GmbH Reichenbach commissioned its Kumac digestate processing system from Weltec Biopower. This is the first Kumac plant to go live in Germany, in addition to the 16 that have been built worldwide to date. The agricultural company based in the Vogtland region of Saxony, Germany, specializes in dairy farming and the cultivation of feed crops. In addition to the dairy farm with 1,400 cows and breeding cattle, the farmers have been operating a biogas plant with an electrical output of 845 kW since 2006. The facilities generate up to 72,000 t of liquid manure and digestate a year.
Every day, the biogas plant feeds 12,000 kWh of electricity into the public grid. In addition, the plant supplies up to 500 kW of heat to small consumers and to the site of the former Paracelsus Clinic in Reichenbach via a heating network. The plant’s main business consists of the delivery of biogas via a 3.2-km raw biogas pipeline to the heating plant of Stadtwerke Reichenbach for the base load supply of flats and social facilities. The amount of electricity generated each year corresponds to the annual consumption of around 6,000 private households.