Dairy - Milk is widely regarded as nature’s miracle food – and it’s easy to see why. Apart from being packed full of essential protein, vitamins and minerals, it is arguably the most versatile food on the planet. Julie Mitchell looks at a global phenomenon that shows no signs of slowing.

Frothing cappuccino coffee, an indulgent cake oozing with cream, a cool glass of milkshake on a summer’s day, butter melting tantalizingly on hot toast, a crusty bread roll crammed with delicious, nutty flavored Cheddar cheese.

There’s no doubt that dairy products regularly feature in the daily diet in most parts of the world. The uses of milk are legion. As a drink, flavored with fruit or chocolate or added to hot drinks. You can process it into a variety of milk types. Skim the cream off the top for myriad culinary uses or churn it into butter. Curdle milk and you get cheese – the varieties run into thousands. Whey, the by-product of cheese-making, which used to be discarded as waste, is today a valuable raw ingredient for the food industry. And even when milk turns sour you can still enjoy it as yogurt. Such is the cultural impact of dairy products that they have inspired many well-known phrases. People in the US refer to an important person as ‘a big cheese’, while the French expression ‘en faire tout un fromage’ means to make a big deal of something. Similarly, ‘to milk’ is associated with making the most of a situation, for example, “he milked it for all it was worth”.

The uses of milk are legion: Skim the cream off the top for myriad culinary uses or churn it into butter. Curdle milk and you get cheese – the varieties run into thousands.

To read the complete article, please download the pdf below.

GEA - Milking and processing excellence


The globalization of the dairy industry could not have been achieved without milking machines, cutting-edge processing technology and refrigeration. And new developments in all these areas will continue to play a critical role in helping farmers and dairy companies to meet the challenges of the future.

One of the leaders in this field is the GEA Group, which has a long and impressive history of supplying innovation and engineering know-how throughout the dairy chain. Given that GEA technology is involved in approximately one quarter of all milk produced worldwide it’s highly likely that the dairy products in your refrigerator will have had some contact with the company’s milking or processing equipment.

Since 1926 WestfaliaSurge – part of GEA Farm Technologies – has been setting the trends in milk collection technology, with a comprehensive range of equipment for all stages of the milking process. In particular, the market-leading WestfaliaSurge AutoRotor can milk more than 100 cows an hour. And now the company has now taken the milking revolution further again with the T!TAN milking robot, which enables cows to be milked when they choose and is suitable for farms of virtually all typical sizes.

GEA’s Process Engineering Division supplies everything from stand-alone installations to complete plants for processing dairy products including milk and whey powders. The division supplies turnkey plants for some of the world’s biggest dairy operations. GEA Process Engineering company Ahlborn was founded in 1856 and became part of the GEA Group in 1979. Today, it is part of the newly named GEA TDS GmbH company, which also includes Tuchenhagen Dairy Systems, a leader in the dairy, fruit juice and food processing industries.

The companies of the GEA Process Equipment division support adherence to strict hygiene regulations for companies from the brewing, beverages, dairy and foodstuff industries, as well as the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, cosmetics and health care industries with a range of homogenizers, valves and plate heat exchangers. The diverse processes for handling liquid foodstuffs require many heating up and cooling steps. GEA Ecoflex plate heat exchangers meet these demands with a wide range of plates for all applications. A high level of productivity, cost-efficient operations and reliable product consistency characterize process components from GEA Tuchenhagen. Process valves, valve blocks, in-line measurement and control equipment, cleaning devices, CIP units and pumps manufactured by the company from Büchen, Germany, meet the demanding hygienic and sterile requirements of these industries. High pressure homogenization is essential for improving the stability and shelf life of dairy products. GEA Niro Soavi offers a full range of homogenizers and pumps covering all dairy industry requirements, from pilot to large scale fully automated units. Compared to conventional homogenizing valves, the company’s patented NanoValve™ achieves optimal performance at low pressure and is ideal for processing milk, cream, yogurt, cheese, baby food, ice cream, whey and butter.

The company GEA Niro offers pilot plants for test processing and manufacturing product samples. And its Test Center for Food and Chemical Products in Denmark offers a world-leading resource for food and chemical companies to try out a range of extraction, evaporation and drying technologies.

Separation equipment is central to the processing system within modern dairies. This is also a field in which GEA – with its company GEA Westfalia Separator Process – excels. The centrifugal separators remove bacteria and they are crucial to a wide variety of dairy processes. Applications range from single-stage/two-stage bacterial clarification to the special bacterial clarification used for drinking milk as well as the variable bacterial
clarification of cheese milk, treating concentrated whey and pre-treatment of milk powder. Westfalia is the market leader in centrifugal separators for fresh cheese. The FAGE dairy, the largest operation of its kind in Greece, chose machines from GEA Westfalia Separator Process for its main plant in Athens as well as for a new dairy in the US.

Another innovation from Westfalia’s Dairy Technology Business Unit is PROCOOL – which enables dairies to switch from cold to warm milk separation, using the same machine, providing more flexibility and cheaper running costs. Westfalia also produces turnkey process lines for the variety of soft cheese products that have been developed in the trend towards more health-conscious diets (including cream cheese, quark, Thermoquark and Baker’s Cheese). There is a high level of automation in the process lines. In addition Westfalia supplies all elements of the process lines for the butter industry, including the buttermilking machine, tanks, pasteurization unit and associated pipework.

Like most fresh foods, dairy products need to be kept cold. GEA Refrigeration is one of the world’s leaders in industrial refrigeration. The division provides state-of-the-art refrigeration technology, which can be used during the whole process, from the delivery of the fresh milk to the factory through all stages of production and storage.

Finally, clean air at the right temperature is essential to providing the hygienic conditions needed for processing and storing dairy products. Leading air treatment experts of the GEA Air Treatment Division broke new ground by providing a climate control system at the Müritz-Milch cheese dairy in Waren, Germany, based on the dehumidifiers normally used for indoor swimming pools. To counteract the effects of the salty air from the brine bath – central to the cheese-making process – GEA Happel Klimatechnik supplied equipment made from corrosion-resistant steel.

<--- CLICK TO DOWNLOAD