IDM | Site report Whey for babyfood Hochwald Foods has set a new worldwide benchmark Hochwald Foods has massively upgraded its activities in Hünfeld, Germany, over the past years. Part of the investment was a new whey processing plant built on a greenfield site for production of demineralised whey concentrate and powder which alone saw a capital expenditure of €90m. IDM was granted a look into the facility. Close cooperation with Milupa The plant manufactures only semi-finished products for infant formulas. This is why QC starts at the dairy farm level as Gunter Kaufmann, head of the nearby Hochwald cheese pant, explains. In cooperation with their main customer Danone/Milupa, who runs a babyfood plant in Fulda just a few kilometers away from Hünfeld, Hochwald has not only designed the new plant but also developed a comprehensive QA concept that covers the whole supply chain. Nearness of milk producers, cheese plant and drying facilities allows for processing fresh material and at the same time minimises transport. The semi-finished products reach the customer virtually wall-to-wall. The QA concept guarantess for instance that the 900 dairy farms that supply Hochwald’s Hünfeld facilities cannot use certain detergents. The cheese as well as the whey processing plant had to revamp their water treatment in a way that 6 · 10 2016 | international-dairy.com the chlorate level for babyfood production is kept at all times. "The babyfood industry has the highest demands on production standards," says Mr. Kaufmann. GEA TDS and GEA Niro were awarded with the general contract for the wet and the dry processing parts of the plant as well as GEA was responsible for automation. Only the demineralisation part was installed by Japanese-French specialists Eurodia. The whole building of the new plant took only two years as Hochwald and Danone cooperated intensively providing mutual exchange of know-how. A side effect of this cooperation is that Hochwald may use this know-how in their other plants as well. A total of €90m has been invested into the new whey processing plant of Hochwald Foods (photo: Hochwald) Plant managers Gunter Kaufmann (cheesemaking, right) and Olaf Hauschild (whey processing) made sure that Hochwald Foods recruited only highly skilled workers (photo: IDM)
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