At A house, we are proud to have such an impressive variety of future protein initiatives. In A sustainable Journal, we are taking the opportunity to get to know them and their thoughts on the future of food. The animal protein industry might not be what first comes to mind when discussing sustainability, due to its contributions to greenhouse gas emissions. Fortunately, things are moving forward in this area. Meet Moving Floor – the A house members aiming to change the world for cattle.

Hi Moving Floor, what is it that you do?

We do automatic cleaning for farm animals, rotating the floors underneath the animals to give them a sort of toilet. By doing so, we drastically improve the conditions in the barn and lower the carbon footprint as well as antibiotics use.

What’s in your loop at the moment? 

We have just received fairly big grants and are now starting projects on setting up a bigger demonstration farm for pigs in Sweden. 

You are saying you are ”the new industry standard”, tell us more!

Our vision is to improve the conditions for farming in environmental and societal aspects as well as improving farm profitability.

”By cleaning out innumerable times per day we can lower ammonia emissions by 85%”

Providing an affordable market disruptive high-tech solution in an otherwise low-tech industry will hopefully lead to us becoming a new industry standard. Simply put, we believe in presenting no tradeoff between being sustainable and profitable. And we aim for a 20% cut in CO2 emissions.

How can your self-cleaning floors make the world more sustainable?

By cleaning out innumerable times per day we can lower ammonia emissions by 85%, which in the end cuts greenhouse gases. Animals that are clean and healthy need less or no antibiotics. Our cleaning is done without using water, which is not the case for many farms in the world.

What is the future of protein from your perspective? 

Even though we see a trend in alternative proteins and stagnating pork consumption in our part of the world, the general prognosis is an increase of pork consumption by 25% in the coming ten years due to increased demand in developing countries; mainly driven by urbanization and increasing living standards. For this reason, we target these markets, especially Asia. The current meat industry needs to improve its standards and we are there to help. Feeding the global human population with high-quality proteins touches upon so many things: culture, ethics, climate, water usage, poverty, equality, welfare and health, just to mention a few. It is safe to say that the future of proteins will definitely need just as much diversity and that we are really intrigued to follow the development. 

What’s the collaboration of your dreams?

We love collaborations! We’ve collaborated with ABB on the digitalization of our concept. We are so happy that ABB supports us in this. We collaborate with progressive farmers and researchers and truly enjoy their enthusiasm and skill. The collaboration of our dreams is, as of now, to work with one of the multinationals in meat production. We are also very fortunate to work with experienced mentors. Hans Sandberg, former General Counsel at Atlas Copco, goes down in history as the most warmhearted and dedicated mentor of all time! 

How has the pandemic changed your perspective?

We had signed a deal, had our bags packed and tickets bought to go to China and start a joint venture in February 2020. Then Covid came along and rocked our boat, with the lesson learned to quickly try to navigate new waters. When running a small company one is often advised to focus on very few but important things. We have always worked on way too many projects at the same time. This time it might show us right… =) 

movingfloor.se