Financial sustainability and profitability of supercritical CO2 pasteurization of liquid products: A case study

This work presents an analysis of a supercritical CO2 (SC-CO2) pasteurization process, focusing on the financial and economic parameters that make the process sustainable at an industrial level. A small company processing 5,000,000 bottles of apple juice per year has been chosen as a case study. Investment and operating costs have been estimated based on data collected from the market and the relevant economic literature. The financial sustainability assessment was performed through the Discounted Cash Flow methodology, proving that SC-CO2 pasteurization is profitable on a 10-year horizon. The Net Present Value is strictly positive and the Internal Rate of Return higher than the cost of funding. The sensitivity analysis shows the robustness of this study to possible changes in the model parameters. Overall, this work demonstrates SC-CO2 pasteurization to be profitable and, considering the current growth of the high-nutritional value fruit juice market, it suggests positive financial returns for both incumbents and new entrants.