Site report | IDM
The new valve knots in the milk intake and/or for the milk storage facility make
production even more flexible (photos: Hohenloher Molkerei)
9 2017 | international-dairy.com · 11
The Hohenloher dairy in Schwäbisch
Hall, Germany, continued to invest
heavily last year despite the milk
price crisis. € 7.5 million was put up
for a variety of projects. IDM was on site.
Separation of milk sorts
The reason for almost all investments was
that Hohenloher dairy had almost completely
switched to GMO-free milk last year
and is therefore particularly dependent on
a clean separation of the milk sorts.
In order to be able to cope with the separation
process physically, two new raw
milk tanks of 150,000 liters and three new
product tanks of 200,000 liters each were
installed. Supplier was Tankbau Ullmann
from Kempten. This company has also set
up a new 30,000-liter cream tank, which
provides the basis for the dairy to produce
non-GMO cream and cream products.
The milk acceptance facilities were also
expanded, and instead of two has now four
tracks, which feed a total of nine silo tanks.
The collection truck drivers are equipped
with an RFID chip, which makes access to
the milk acceptance lines possible at all, and
allows to guide the vehicles to the right acceptance
lines. With this fully automatic
system, fail-offs are excluded. The total
discharge capacity is 65 m³/h per station,
leaving significant space for future higher
raw material input.
A fully automatic milk intake by Tetra Pak
Processing was installed. This company has
also supplied the new valve nodes for raw
and finished milk. The system is so flexible
that four milk lines can be run in parallel,
and at the same time milk from up to four
tanks can be drawn off on two heating or
filter lines. In addition, it is possible to clean
while the tanks are being filled or emptied.
Up to four CIP operations can be performed
simultaneously.
Tetra Pak PlantMaster
At the heart of the entire automation of
dairy processing as well as filling and packaging
processes at the Hohenloher dairy has
been the Tetra Pak PlantMaster automation
and MES system since 2016. This system was
implemented more largely as in any other
German dairy. The milk is provided with a socalled
Work ID from the farm, an ID it keeps
until the end, i.e. after packing. This means
that the code on the packaging allows for
tracing not only to the origin of the milk,
but also to the ingredients and packaging
material and, of course, to all process and
quality data. Tetra Pak Processing has created
a special connection for the transfer
of laboratory equipment to the LIMS Qualifax
used by the Hohenloher dairy for many
years. The infusion plant for ESL dairy production,
which was newly acquired in 2016
by GEA (15,000 l/h), was also linked to Tetra
Pak PlantMaster. This was done through one
of the 40 virtual servers that the dairy has
set up. The eleven Tetra Pak filling lines and
all heaters, peripherals, etc., which are used
by the Hohenloher dairy, and the existing
ERP by Regnum are also integrated.
Tetra Pak PlantMaster offers a comfortable
operation as the Hohenloher dairy
The new GEA infusion plant for ESL milk production was connected to the automation
system Tetra Pak PlantMaster (photo: Hohenloher Molkerei)