GEA to build Asia’s largest milk production facility in India

August 14, 2017 11:40 am

During the first quarter of current fiscal, GEA in India received an order from the AmulFed Dairy (formerly Mother Dairy) in Gandhinagar, a unit of Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). The order, said to be for a ‘lower double-digit, million-euro amount’, is for a new turnkey dairy plant for the production of 150 tonnes per day of skim milk powder and 120 tonnes per day of dairy whitener/baby food.

The milk powder plant is scheduled to begin production in 2018. When completed, the plant will be the largest skim milk powder and dairy whitener plant in Asia. The company markets its milk and milk products under the Amul brand and its baby milk powder under the name of Amul Spray.

The plant, to be installed on a turnkey basis by GEA, will process around 90,000 litres per hour of milk to produce multiple value-added products. AmulFed already has two milk powder plants in same location supplied by GEA. Together they make AmulFed the largest plant in Asia at a single location. The new plant features GEA’s most advance safety system and uses hygienic architectural design principles to make it one of the most advanced GEA has built to date.

Some other interesting features to be included in the AmulFed plant are:
• Use of a Mechanical Vapour Re-compression (MVR) system from GEA within the evaporation plant. MVR continuously recycles energy by recompressing the vapour within the evaporator. This reduces energy costs and the CO2 footprint to minimise the environmental load.
• Use of a Reverse Osmosis (RO) polisher to treat the milk condensate from the evaporation plant and recycle the water for reuse within the plant. This significantly reduces water usage and approaches zero liquid discharge concept.
• Application of a GEA clarifying separator to remove the entire life cycle of bacteria from the milk, thereby ensuring a supply of bacteria-free healthy milk throughout the process cycle.
• Inclusion of GEA SANICIPTM bag filters in series with cyclones to collect powder fines, save product and reduce emissions to the atmosphere.
• The inclusion of a GEA sifter to provide a uniform distribution of the powder particles and, therefore, a more homogenous final product.
• It will also be equipped with powder packing and a conveying system from GEA.
• The plant will be designed to operate in fully automated mode. This includes the powder production, conveying, storage, packing, final packed product conveying and a complete management information system.

“We will provide AmulFed with a hygienically-superior plant that will deliver peak performance,” said Abhay Chaudhari, GEA Country Managing Director, India Cluster. “The AmulFed milk powder plant at Gandhinagar will not be just the largest in Asia but it will also be the most environment friendly,” he said.