GEA Process Engineering has received an order for building the world’s largest dairy spray dryer from Fonterra. The order is one of the largest ever for GEA Process Engineering amounting to more than €70 million.
When this dairy spray dryer is completed, by August 2013, everything about it will be massive. The plant will have a capacity of 30 tonnes/hour of whole milk powder equivalent to more than 4.4 million litres/day of milk. This means that approximately 260,000 cows must be milked each day on average and that around 200 milk tankers are required to carry the milk to the plant.
“GEA Process Engineering has been in the business of developing and supplying dairy spray dryers for nearly 80 years now and we see dairy as one of our most important markets. We have, therefore, a continued focus on innovation and see this milestone order as proof of our leading technological position,” says Niels Erik Olsen, executive vice president and segment board member at GEA Process Engineering.
Fonterra is a world leading exporter of dairy products, processing around 90 percent of New Zealand’s milk. Fonterra is also a major player in the international dairy industry where Fonterra produces and trades approximately 40 percent of all traded whole milk powder.
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The new project will be named Darfield D2 and is the second of two plants on the Darfield green-field site which GEA Process Engineering has undertaken for Fonterra. The scope of the project which only utilises GEA process technology covers milk reception, standardisation, evaporation, drying, powder transport and packing. The plant will be the seventh green-field plant supplied by GEA Process Engineering in New Zealand over the past five years. GEA Process Engineering is currently working on the first stage of the Darfield dairy, called Darfield D1.
“Both parties are working well together on the Darfield D1 project, which is well under way, and naturally we are happy that we have also been awarded this second project at the Darfield site. Now that we have signed the deal with Fonterra, our employees and iare thrilled, and we cannot wait to start this new major project,” says David Bower, managing director of GEA Process Engineering New Zealand.
The end products of the new plant will service the growing markets in the Middle East, South East Asia and China, where the demand for milk powder products is rising.
GEA Process Engineering develops, designs and markets production plant equipment and processes for the dairy, brewery, food, pharmaceutical and chemical industries. With sales close to 1.6 billion in 2011 and more than 5000 employees working in more than 40 countries, GEA Process Engineering is recognised as a world leader within liquid processing, concentration, industrial drying, powder processing and handling, emission control, solid dosage forms and sterile products and aseptic packaging.
GEA Process Engineering is a business segment of GEA Group, headquartered in Germany.
