Engro Foods milk processing plant comes on stream in Pakistan.
GEA TDS has recently completed a Euro 3 million milk processing plant for
Engro Foods in Pakistan. It is one of the biggest plants of its kind in
Pakistan and the first ever in the Sahiwal region. The commissioning of the
plant was completed in just 2 months and operation started by end December
2007.
The plant supplies the region around Sahiwal with 250,000 litres
of low fat milk a day,
that’s 1 million servings, and 10 million servings
of Tarang (tea whitener). The plant provides
a processing outlet for the
local farmers who rear dairy herds of cows and, especially in the smaller
farms, buffalo. The Engro plant also contributes to the local economy by
employing some 200 people throughout the factory.
The GEA TDS project
was to supply equipment and engineering services throughout the process. This
included milk reception; milk processing; UHT processing; powder mixing; cream
handling and processing; Clean in Place (CIP) equipment such as trucks, process
and filling machines; detailed engineering and project management;
automation for both the process and CIP equipment; and commissioning.
Raw milk reception handles up to 40,000 lit/hr of both cow (20%) and
buffalo (80%) milk from the surrounding region’s farmers cooling it from
approximately 15˚C to 4˚C for storage in the two 125m3 storage
tanks.
The process can pasteurize milk to 85˚C at the rate of 25,000
lit/hr and includes milk clarification and skimming; standardisation for milk,
cream, SNF and butteroil; butteroil dosing; a refurbished homogeniser; and
degassing. Pasteurised milk is stored in 5 tanks each holding up to
75m3. Cream is pasteurised separately at a temperature of 95˚C at a
rate of up to 3,500 lit/hr. UHT equipment, with indirect heating and cooling
via heat exchangers, can handle up to 21,000 lit/hr.
The CIP system
covers the whole process from the delivery trucks through to the filling
machines. Acid and caustic concentrates are stored on site in two tanks each
with
a capacity of 15m3.
The whole process is controlled
using PLCs supplied by Allen Bradley. PLCs are located in cooled cabinets
installed on the base-frame unit of each module. All were delivered wired and
I/O tested.
GEA TDS was involved in the project right from the start
consulting with Engro on the mechanical design and creating the initial
engineering drawings. Tuchenhagen staff supervised the installation and
commissioning to ensure that the work was completed to meet the client’s
demanding time schedule.
Although Engro has only been in the food and
dairy sector since 2006 the company has already carved out a significant market
share and is growing quickly. The company is planning to expand its dairy
processing still further and to move into the processing of dairy whitener and
ice cream. In such a short time it’s already well on the way to achieving its
goal to be one of the biggest players in Pakistan’s food industry.
Published: 11 July 2008