Yuhayna plant site
Refreshment from the desert
Juhayna group of companies covers several top positions in Egypt’s dairy and beverage industry rankings. Established some 26 years ago by food engineer Safwan Tahbet, Juhayna have developed into market leaders both in the dairy and the fruit juice business in the country. People who know Mr. Thabet say he’s one with a vision: starting from scratch, in fact in sand, he built his first factory on an area without any existing infrastructure in the 6th October city. Starting with beverages and juice, Juhayna have expanded into dairy as well taking over several competitors over the years.
Large-size project
In 2005/2006, Juhayna started a preevaluation for a complete new fruit juice and beverage factory with the target to go into operation in three stages. First stage was to install enough production capacity to satisfy market demand within 3 years from the start. The 2nd and 3rd stages were defined for a capacity to meet the market size 5 and 8 years after the start. One should remember that Egypt is one of the countries worldwide with the highest growth in population and at the same time developing prosperity for an ever larger proportion of consumers. 5 or 8 years might mean a capacity increase of 100 or more percent. This illustrates the dimensions of the Juhayna undertaking.
Demands
First Food Projects UK was called as consultant for engineering. The company has enormous experience in the Middle East and was amongst others involved in several large projects by major Saudi food conglomerate Almarai. Together with Juhayna’s Director of Manufacturing,
Hugo Harbo, First Food Projects initiated the tender and contracting phase
in 2007. Specific highlights of the demanding project were superior product quality, savings in general, accuracy of blending, a minimum of product loss, highest degree of production availability, flexibility of operations and long running times of production without interrupts.
Main steps
GEA TDS Scope together with Indag was awarded the contract of supplying the liquid processing part to the project – on the basis of their profound knowledge and ample references. To name the main stages in the processing chain, the partners were to supply the water and syrup silo tanks, juice concentrate handling, premix preparation and storage, continuous sugar, gums and ingredients dissolving, dosing and handling of containers. Indag supplied the inline
multi-mix installation that feeds 5 pasteurizers, while GEA TDS were also responsible
for CIP and automation.
Production overview
Juhayna’s new plant in the outskirts of Cairo processes frozen concentrated juice that is delivered in 200 litre barrels. Upon surface thawing and melting, the juice enters one of eight concentrate tanks that are located in a cold room. To avoid sub-standard produce, juice concentrate together with a “premix” from flavours, colours and stabilizers and the main components liquid sugar, water, vitamins, acids and rework are mixed to obtain a batch. This batch is checked for quality in the lab before the product enters the pasteurizer. The system chosen by Juhayna makes sure that only top quality product enters the production chain on the basis of optimum mixing. Water and syrup tanks were installed outdoor. To prevent sand and dust from entering the product, a venting system is installed in the factory. An automatic handling system for containers with small ingredients ensures minimum loss while a rework collection system allows for re-use after a quality check. GEA TDS have supplied 4 tubular pasteurizers with capacities ranging from 7,500 to 15,000 litres per hour. Another plate heat exchanger processes hot fill products without fibres. Each pasteurizer has its own deaerator
and homogenizer (GEA Niro Soavi). The plant can process clear beverages as well as high pulpy juice with fibres. Long life products are kept in an aseptic tank farm as a buffer between
pasteurizer and aseptic carton package fillers while fresh products are stored in an ultraclean buffer tank. There is a separate line for CSD/fizzy juice.
Products are filled in large variety of packages, SIG Combibloc cartons of different sizes, HDPE and PET containers and pouches. Finally, there are two separate CIP sets with 5 tanks, each. This CIP sets are configured in a way to save water and energy as well as chemicals. CIP can be initiated without waiting times and cleaning fluids are instantly available.
Pasteurizer with dearators and homogenizer
Pasteurizers
The pasteurizers supplied by GEA TDS, just like piping, were optimized in their flow characteristics to provide low water-product mix phase; these mix phase is reworked into the product so that Juhayna produce virtually without product loss. Phases are monitored
and separated using Brix sensors. The tubular heat exchangers model VARITUBE SK have an impact strip to process products containing fibres. Heat exchange is made product vs. product,
the removable heat exchangers compensate for heat strain and have no dead ends. All heat exchangers installed in the plant have especially long production runs.
The throughput through the heat exchangers can be adjusted to required settings from 50 to 100 per cent. The heat impact on the product is this kept constant which avoids any heat-induced quality differences between thebatches. Degassing works using a special distribution of the product and a falling stream allows for an effective degassing at very low delta t. This requires some extra control but saves Juhayna an enormous amount of energy costs.
Automation
The whole process – from materials intake, quality control, order management, execution of the production until tracking&tracing was automated using the lead system Plant IT from ProLeit. Installed hardware are Siemens S7 Plc‘s with network ProfiBus and ASi networks. Key of the system is the recipe management tool Batch IT for the whole process with stored parameter for
recipes,ingredients and process. Together with local subcontractors, GEA TDS and Indag have taken care for piping, electrics and insulation. There was a master fitter on site all the time
to advise, organize and for quality checks.
This article has been published in IDM (International Dairy Magazine) - Issue No. 5 - July 2009
See here the complete article as pdf.
Published 13 September 2009