GEA, which supplies processing technology for dairy and food industry, has installed a high performance spray dryer at the new milk powder facility in Lichfield, New Zealand.
The spray dryer has been developed for GEA's customer Fonterra.
GEA claims that the spray dryer installed at Fonterra’s plant is one of the highly efficient machine in the market with a capacity of producing 30 tons of milk powder per hour.
It can process about 4.4 million litres of milk per day. This is equivalent of 165 truckloads.
GEA supplied all of the processing technology including acceptance of tanker to evaporation, drying and powder handling and packaging. The drying chamber in the plant weighs in at 200 tons and has a diameter of 18 meters.
Apart from this plant, the company had also developed another plant for Fonterra, the Darfield II. It has been operating since December 2013. The focus of GEA has been to reduce the total cost of ownership and also to increase energy efficiency.
With respect to energy efficiency, GEA said that, the plant requires little process water as the evaporator condensate is filtered through membrane of high-pressure reverse osmosis system. Thus, the plant requires less water for operating the machine and puts less burden on the wastewater treatment facility onsite.
Fonterra COO Robert Spurway said: “Premium milk powder is a valuable product for us.
“The capacity the new Lichfield plant takes the pressure off during the peak of the season, meaning we have more freedom to prioritize milk into higher returning products.”
The milk powder plant will be officially opened in December of this year and Fonterra plans to export the milk powder produced at the site to as many as 20 markets such as the Middle East, China and South-East Asia.
