First Milk is investing in new whey processing equipment at its Haverfordwest creamery in Pembrokeshire to improve the quality of product and provide significant energy savings.
Work on the project will begin immediately and is expected to be completed in January 2008. The installation of this equipment fo rms the main element of a multi-million pound project, which has been part-funded by a Welsh Assembly grant of £1.07M. When completed the venture will have cost over £3M.
The creamery produces over 20,000t of cheese for a number of major retail customers, including Morrison and Tesco, in addition to 35,000t of whey products. Whey is used as an ingredient in a range of products, including functional foods, protein drinks, probiotics, prebiotics, pharmaceutical, bakery and confectionery.
Paul Rowe, general manager at First Milk's Haverfordwest creamery said: "Investing in new whey processing equipment, in addition to the £3.3M spent at the creamery over the last 12 months on cheese manufacturing equipment, boilers and compressors, clearly demonstrates the commitment of First Milk to Wales. The grant support we have received from The Welsh Assembly has been instrumental in enabling us to undertake this project.”
Rowe added: "The dairy industry is extremely competitive, and it's critical that we continue to invest in our assets to maintain our leading position."
The main element of the project is to decommission an evaporation plant at the creamery and install a series of membrane filtration systems and associated equipment. Heat energy will also be recovered as part of the project, thus reducing the volumes of water currently sourced from the mains water supply. There will also be a corresponding reduction in effluent volumes.
In addition to Haverfordwest creamery, First Milk owns a further two manufacturing sites in Wales: a cheese packing plant, and a whey processing plant at Maelor near Wrexham.
Meanwhile, the latest figures from The Dairy Group show that dairy margins continue to fall due to a combination of a lower milk price and an increasing feed cost. According to Ian Powell, director of The Dairy Group: “The MCi [Milk Cheque Interactive] results to December 2006 show the rolling milk price has reduced by 0.6 pence per litre (ppl) to 18.1ppl, with the purchased feed cost per litre up by 0.4ppl to 4.1ppl … The outlook is for dairy margins to fall even further due to an increase in the purchased feed cost.”