Description

United Milk Company groups a number of privatised dairy production and distribution facilities. With the introduction of the new shareholder, Global Finance, it has been decided to modernise one of the production plants in order to increase the capacity, improve the efficiency and quality, and start franchising activities with a partner, Yoplait.

The strategic choice has been made to realise the project in the plant at Plovdiv after the project was initially intended for another site. Today, the Plovdiv plant produces about 40 tons per day, 6 days a week. The target capacity is 120 tons per day. The reconstruction of the plant consists of several important modernisations (replacement), as well as the installation of new equipment. We refer to the reference documents for more details about the project.

The reconstruction had to be realised without interfering with the ongoing production. A significant part of the work has to be performed during the weekly downtime of one day. It is considered that the production can occasionally be stopped during the week for a period of maximum 48 hours.

Product description:

When the milk is received at the plant, it has to be heated to a temperature high enough to kill most of micro-organisms, and low enough to maintain structural integrity of the milk components. Then the culture is inoculated. The required micro-organisms are present in these cultures. Then it takes some time to transform the liquid milk into yoghurt.

This process is based on a chemical reaction, which is a consequence of the metabolism of the culture. The micro-organisms transform the milk sugar in milk acid. And because the milk proteins are very sensitive to the acid level, they just change their structure, which gives a final result yoghurt.