FMA brings bulk milk storage expertise to Dairy Farmers of Britain.

Project management, process control and solutions integration specialists, FMA Process Engineering, of Lichfield has completed two major finished milk bulk storage projects at Dairy Farmers of Britain's Blaydon site near Newcastle.

These complete turnkey projects valued at circa 850,000 [pounds sterling], involved the process design, installation and integration of four high-level milk silos in a particularly tight location at the Blaydon site and also enabled space to be created for two additional finished milk silos in the future.

With supermarket contracts requiring the Blaydon site to be able to provide extra capacity and flexibility, FMA also had to fast-track all stages to ensure that the new finished milk silos were on-line within the required tight timescales.

Rapidly becoming recognised as a premier brand in its own right--as well as for an increasing range of 'supermarket label' dairy products--the Dairy Farmers' co-operative required significantly increased finished milk storage capacity at Blaydon in order to cope with growing product volumes and to enable total segregation/traceability of individual supermarket ranges.

In projects that also assisted the Blaydon dairy in developing a long-term site strategy, FMA supplemented the four 22,500 litre horizontal finished milk tanks already in place, firstly with two new 120,000 litre milk silos plus the infrastructure to accommodate four additional silos when required. The second project involved the installation of a second pair of 120,000 litre silos along with increased routing flexibility.

As part of their involvement, FMA had to first establish a way of providing increased storage capacity at the Blaydon site both physically (because of space restrictions) and operationally (as the process would involve sourcing milk from two existing pasteurisers plus routing the new silos to the filling lines without interrupting the dairy's 24/7 operation).

To compensate for the compact footprint of the site, a plan was formulated to install the new silos at high level. Operating to a totally transparent open-book approach, in a role that would involve process design, extensive systems upgrades and management of the sub-contractor base, FMA worked closely with Dairy Farmers' nominated steelwork manufacturer regarding the construction of a structure capable of holding the first two designated 120,000 litres milk silos plus an additional two silos when required, resulting in storage of an extra 480,000 litres of finished milk in total. Space would be available for two further silos as part of a longer term site development.

Another aspect of FMA's responsibility involved extending the legacy control system in place at Blaydon to replicate the control philosophy used across the existing finished milk tanks then apply it to the new silos. This was done in such a way as to ensure the easy integration of the future silos, but in the knowledge of the longer term plan to replace the obsolete control system.

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