New cheese plant doubles processing capacity

GEA has installed a cheesemaking plant for Madeta — a dairy company in the Czech Republic.

The new plant can process up to 400,000 L of milk a day — twice the capacity of the former facility. Each day, the plant produces up to 42 tons of hard and semi-hard cheese, including Maasdam, Emmental, Edam, Gouda and Tilsit.

Although the old production plant had reliably served Madeta for many years, the upgraded technology and production methods provided an opportunity to improve efficiency, yields and technological safety, as well as increase production.

The new installation includes milk storage tanks with connections to both upstream and downstream pasteurisers; five new 15 m³ integrated cheese vats; fresh water and dosing systems; whey extraction and storage; and heating of the cheese vats via the double jacket. GEA also supplied a new hygienic starter preparation system and the CIP system for the entire cheese area.

The whey processing line was supplied exclusively by GEA in the Czech Republic, with technical support from GEA Engineering Office in Büchen, Germany. The process includes double pasteurisation, involving one new line — including whey clarification and cream separation — and one existing line, which was upgraded. The existing separators were reused. GEA’s Refrigeration Technologies division supplied a 500 kW NH3 heat pump and optimised the existing refrigeration system for the new cheese plant.

Automation

Automation is provided through GEA Codex software, which includes both the GEA master and dynamic recipe systems, providing full control of the cheesemaking process. The GEA master recipe includes every element of the process line, including specifications regarding the addition of rennet, starter, wash water, colour and calcium chloride.

As part of this project, GEA also implemented its cheese milk calculator. Based on the quantities of cheese sold, this program uses the cheese recipe to back-calculate the amount of cheese milk required and the ideal fat to protein ratio. Depending on the protein content of the raw milk, the calculator determines the mixture needed from the raw milk silos to achieve the ideal cheese milk composition as closely as possible. It is easy to adjust the fat content of the cheese milk, but the protein content can only be modified at this plant by mixing raw milks with different protein ratios.

While the new Madeta plant in Planá is designed to process up to 400,000 L of milk per day, its capacity can be increased to up to 600,000 L a day if required.

Image credits: Madeta/GEA