Associate
- Joined
- 2 Oct 2019
- Posts
- 64
Had a very inneresting excursion this weekend courtesy of a chap I know who services machinery for the food processing industry. He had a call out yesterday to the spray dried milk powder plant at Arla Dairies in North Tawton, Devon & got on the blower to see if I'd like to go along.
I was game, even though it meant getting up at 5 am after a late night on Saturday.
You can see the great milk spray dryer of North Tawton before you've barely left Somerset on the M5 as the unit itself is housed in a huge structure some 200 feet in height.
The basic mechanics of it are that raw milk enters at the top and is subjected to a vortex of hot air that drives out any moisture and leaves a powdery residue which settles in a large silo awaiting collection during the bagging process.
We started out climbing a metal ladder to the top of the plant to observe the ingress of the raw material but it wasn't until we went down a floor that I was hit by the incredible heat generated by the plant. Then I was introduced to the 2 engineers overseeing the operation , Nigel and Tom, who were ensconced in a control room that looked like the flight deck of the Apollo space craft with more flashing lights than the most ostentatious of Chritmas lights displays. Their job was basically to monitor the temperature and humidity inside the spray drier as well as the rate of product throughflow. A very narrow temperature range needs to be maintained, they explained, as too low a temperature will lead to a situation where evaporation doesn't occur and liquid milk will fall to the bottom of the silo spoiling any product already collected there, while too high a temperature will lead to a browning of the powder which will subsequently be rejected by quality control.
Indeed, the quality operation is quite impressive with samples being taken for a number of microbiological and physical tests at various stages in the process.
But it was in the bagging hall where we witnessed a huge conflab between quality and production; a situation with which anyone who has worked in manufacturing industry will be familiar. In this case it was the quality of the seals on the bagged product that was being called into question by the qc operative. Basically the powder is bagged in sacks with a polyethylene lining and a sealed is made by the compression of two hot plates as the upright sack passes down the conveyor belt. A perfect seal is indicated by continuous opaque band where the hot plates have been applied. In a defective seal, there is a break in this opacity and that is exactly what the qc operative had found - and not for the first time judging from the "Oh no, not again" reaction from all involved as it would mean stopping the line, making some adjustments and rejecting every sack of powder that had gone through since the previous qc check.
And that basically concluded our end to end tour of the process. It really was fascinating stuff and I shall never look at the creamer I put in my coffee in the same light again.
I was game, even though it meant getting up at 5 am after a late night on Saturday.
You can see the great milk spray dryer of North Tawton before you've barely left Somerset on the M5 as the unit itself is housed in a huge structure some 200 feet in height.
The basic mechanics of it are that raw milk enters at the top and is subjected to a vortex of hot air that drives out any moisture and leaves a powdery residue which settles in a large silo awaiting collection during the bagging process.
We started out climbing a metal ladder to the top of the plant to observe the ingress of the raw material but it wasn't until we went down a floor that I was hit by the incredible heat generated by the plant. Then I was introduced to the 2 engineers overseeing the operation , Nigel and Tom, who were ensconced in a control room that looked like the flight deck of the Apollo space craft with more flashing lights than the most ostentatious of Chritmas lights displays. Their job was basically to monitor the temperature and humidity inside the spray drier as well as the rate of product throughflow. A very narrow temperature range needs to be maintained, they explained, as too low a temperature will lead to a situation where evaporation doesn't occur and liquid milk will fall to the bottom of the silo spoiling any product already collected there, while too high a temperature will lead to a browning of the powder which will subsequently be rejected by quality control.
Indeed, the quality operation is quite impressive with samples being taken for a number of microbiological and physical tests at various stages in the process.
But it was in the bagging hall where we witnessed a huge conflab between quality and production; a situation with which anyone who has worked in manufacturing industry will be familiar. In this case it was the quality of the seals on the bagged product that was being called into question by the qc operative. Basically the powder is bagged in sacks with a polyethylene lining and a sealed is made by the compression of two hot plates as the upright sack passes down the conveyor belt. A perfect seal is indicated by continuous opaque band where the hot plates have been applied. In a defective seal, there is a break in this opacity and that is exactly what the qc operative had found - and not for the first time judging from the "Oh no, not again" reaction from all involved as it would mean stopping the line, making some adjustments and rejecting every sack of powder that had gone through since the previous qc check.
And that basically concluded our end to end tour of the process. It really was fascinating stuff and I shall never look at the creamer I put in my coffee in the same light again.
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