New Tetra Tebel Blockformer hits new grounds in commercial production

In County Kilkenny, close to the heart of Ireland, lies the village of Ballyragget, home of Glanbia Dairy Ingredients, a leading producer of choice matured cheddar cheeses. In 2007, Glanbia (which means “pure food” in Irish) decided to go for a major expansion in production capacity and equipment upgrade with the possibility to further increase capacity as needed.

The plant upgrade and capacity increase solution supplied by Tetra Pak in 2008 included a high-capacity Tetra Tebel Alfomatic – a fully enclosed cheddaring machine that can handle 10 t/h. Glanbia could meet future capacity needs by simply adding Tetra Tebel OST vats and more Tetra Tebel Blockformers.

By mid 2010, the capacity need was growing and blockformer capacity had become a bottleneck. As it happens, Tetra Pak had just developed a new blockforming solution and was looking for a partner who could help out with the validation process in full-scale operation.

“We had several Tetra Tebel Blockformer units already, and have been happy with Tetra Pak’s supply for nearly 30 years,” says Tim Purcell, Cheese Plant Manager at Glanbia Dairy Ingredients. “The new version sounded tempting, so we agreed to validate it at our plant – and at the same time get a head start on our requirements for increased capacity.” “We are very grateful to Glanbia for their willingness to work with us in this important validation process,” says Tetra Pak’s Sales Manager Ronny Kvist. “Particularly for an extensively upgraded machine that is full of numerous new features – and provides significant benefits for the customer once all the wrinkles have been ironed out.”

The Glanbia plant in Ballyragget now has a reliable cheese line producing top-of-the-line cheddar, with increased flexibilty and capacity to handle peak season volumes.

“We will continue to get uniform and top quality blocks with very little product loss,” says Tim Purcell. “We are confident that the performance criteria will be achieved.”

Glanbia will soon be discovering further benefits. A new patented guillotine design enables fast, easy replacements with very little downtime. A new, fully pneumatic lowering and positioning system has nearly eliminated wear and tear. Moreover, by adding frequency converters to the vacuum pumps, energy is consumed only to the extent the pumps are needed. Great for the budget – and the environment.

Source: Tetra Pak