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Anderson Engineering Installs New Pasteurization and Yoghurt Plant While this was the first project undertaken for Greenacres Dairy, Anderson Engineering had previously upgraded a pasteurizer for the sister company, Honeydew Dairies. In fact until recently, the yoghurt production for Greenacres took place at Honeydew. However, as the production capacity was very limited, a decision was made to install a new production facility with a higher through put, so creating the capacity required to relaunch the brand. The Greenacres brand had shown sufficient growth to warrant the investment in additional production capability and this resulted in the company commissioning Anderson Engineering to undertake the upgrade of their Pietermaritzburg-based Mkondeni Facility. Anderson Engineering has a wealth of experience in the design and manufacture of stainless steel processing equipment. They specialise in customising designs and commissioning projects but also undertake routine work producing equipment to specification. The project required Anderson to take a facility, which had previously supplied fresh milk, maas and juice and upgrade it to increase the capacity of the current range of products as well as add the additional yoghurt manufacturing facility. The existing milk pasteurization plant was upgraded from 3000l/hr to 4000l/hr and this new pasteurization facility created an additionional capacity of 1000l/hr to pasteurize milk and yoghurt.
Increasing the capacity and improving the process capability (ie: improving the throughput and hygiene systems) of this plant required the installation of new services which included a plant heating capability, chilling capability as well as a C.I.P. (Cleaning In Place, ie: the equipment isn't dismantled to clean it) cleaning facility for the process equipment. C.I.P. had previously been done by manual cleaning methods whereas the new C.I.P. system is fully automated with a caustic acid and rinse facility. Whereas the previous yoghurt manufacturing system used incubation, maturing and ageing methods, the new yoghurt plant produces yoghurt by the ageing method. Therefore, the new yoghurt plant required a premix tank with blender as well as yoghurt maturing tanks and flavoring tanks providing a batch plant with exceptional quality control capability, so producing a high quality yoghurt product for the Greenacres brand. The initial discussions between Anderson Engineering and Greenacres Dairy began in November 2005, with the project really getting underway in April 2006. The installation was completed within six months with the milk and yoghurt commissioning taking place in October. After this project was successfully completed, Greenacres went on to relaunch their range of yoghurt throughout the Spar chain store group.
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