Europe's largest cheddar- making plant is modernised
Tetra Pak Processing has supplied a wide range of equipment to the new Dairy Crest plant in Davidstow, Cornwall, at which Cathedral City cheese is produced.
The plant is one of the largest in Europe, capable of producing 150t of cheddar a day.
Among the equipment supplied by Tetra Pak is the Tebel Alfomatic, a high-capacity belt cheddaring machine which consists of several slow-moving belts that allow the cheese curd and whey to be separated. The design allows milling and mellowing processes, the salting of cheese chips, and the production of stirred curd and mozzarella as well as cheddar.
The Tetra Tebel Alfomatic is flanked by 11 horizontal Tebel OST V cheese-making vats and six Tebel Blockformer TwinVacs. In addition, Tetra has supplied two 85,000l/h pasteurisers which, due to the high flow rate, are divided into two Tetra Plex plate heat exchangers.
Further, two separate systems have been installed for the treatment of whey -- one for sweet whey and one for salt whey.
The collected sweet whey is clarified in two parallel Tetra Centri 981 clarifiers, each with a capacity of 70,000l/h.
The salted whey is collected from the mixing drum and the mellowing conveyor and passed through a nano-filtration plant after separation in order to be de-salted before remixing with the sweet whey for evaporation.
Tetra Pak has also installed its PlantMaster control systems at the Davidstow facility to control all aspects of the production process.
Contact: Tetra Pak Processing,
Tel: 0870 442 6400
