A life within the field of agriculture

As a former farmer, Svend Brandstrup, CEO of DBH Technology, knows everything about the challenges faced by the agricultural sector. Born and raised at a farm in Trustrup, Jutland, Svend comes from a family where the wish to do things better has always been a central part of life. For many years, Svend worked as a farmer, but not in the traditional sense of the word.

Farmer with world experience

His years as a farmer took him around the world, and he has worked with agricultural development in the US, England and Israel. He is the co-founder of Agricultural Development Denmark Asia (ADDA), which is today financed by DANIDA – a development cooperation under the Danish Foreign Ministry - and is about helping farmers so that they can help themselves.

In 2003, Svend started Brandstrup Consult, where he advised companies on energy and the environment and among other things made biomass calculations for the Danish Food Agency.

Two years later he got the idea to start a biorefinery on the port in Grenaa, Jutland. This idea took him on a tour through the US, where he visited various bioethanol production facilities and built up a substantial knowledge on the production of biofuels from biomass. Following, he convinced the local authority in Grenaa of his idea and made a feasibility study about the possibilities of exploiting the interaction and symbiotic effects of the production of bioethanol from biomass.

With the feasibility study in his hand, the chase for investors began, and soon the work on Denmark’s first biorefinery began.