The Hon Todd McClay, Associate Minister of Trade, and Grant Smith, Mayor of Palmerston North, visited Thermaflo to officially open its containerised dairy process plant earlier this year. Due to be shipped to Indonesia at the end of February, a ribbon cutting ceremony was held for the container as it symbolises the unique design Thermaflo has put in to this project.
For the last 10 years Thermaflo has been working to establish its brand within the Indonesian market. With a number of smaller jobs previously completed it didn’t take long to establish a reputation as manufacturers of high quality processing equipment. This reputation is what helped it land a project to design and manufacture a containerised milk process plant for a well-known pineapple processor. The company first got in touch with Thermaflo in early 2013 as it was looking for a great way to make its business not only greener but to also develop a new dairy-based business. With the infrastructure purchased the Indonesian company contacted Thermaflo for its required processing equipment. Thermaflo provided it with a unique concept that was cost effective and would provide it with the opportunity to expand its operation in the future.
The 40” container plant that Thermaflo manufactured for the company contains a fully hygienic, process plant that will separate, homogenise and pasteurise 1500L of raw cow’s milk per hour. Using a four head inline filler it will also be able to bottle all its own fresh milk and cream. With this unique container plant they are able to operate at the highest international standards and produce a top quality product.
Product is pumped from the raw product tank housed outside into the level controlled pasteuriser balance tank. From here product is pumped through the regenerative section of the plate heat exchanger (PHE) by a centrifugal pump to the separator. From the separator, the cream is separated and sent to the batch pasteuriser for thermal treatment, and the remaining skim milk is then homogenised.
Using the screw valve on the separator it is possible to manually standardise the product to contain a certain percentage of cream. A skilled plant operator would be required, and still the fat level may vary by 1–2 percent due to a fluctuation in the total solids in the milk being processed.
Once the cream is separated, the milk is then sent through the HTST pasteuriser. The pasteuriser heats the raw product to between 73-80Co, for 15 seconds. This temperature profile is not the norm for New Zealand or Australian milk processing, but is very common in an Indonesian plant. Once the milk has been heat treated, it is then sent back through the heat regenerative section of the pasteuriser and then through the cooling section to exit at 4 Co or lower. Once this process is complete the milk is then ready to be bottled through the inline filler.
From the signing of the purchase order, it took the Thermaflo team one month to design the process flows and to make sure all the equipment would fit inside the container. Over the course of the following four months, Thermaflo fabricators built the process from the ground up. This included the sureshield flooring and poly panel walls, the installation of the homogeniser, pasteuriser, separator and all the necessary pipe work to connect each piece of processing machinery. Along with the process plant that is housed within the container, there are also the necessary services that are housed outside, such as the hot water boiler and air conditioning. These will be shipped with a 20” refrigerated container that will be used to stock the finished product.
Once the fabrication was completed at Thermaflo’s premises its team commissioned the container plant at the workshop so that it was ready to be exported. The plant shipped at the end of February with a Thermaflo staff member to train the local operators onsite and carry out the re-commissioning. With their 200-cow dairy herd due to arrive in the following months, it won’t be long before a great new product hits the shelves in Indonesia.
For further information email: shaun.sullivan@thermaflo.co.nz
