The customer is the largest organic dairy company in the UK, producing over 2,000 tons of yogurt, butter, milk and ice cream each week. The site produces a range of yoghurt, milk, butter and cream.

Au2mate worked with Sycamore Process Engineering as a subcontractor of the process automation scope.

The new yoghurt plant is an extension to the current site, which will eventually convert the milk manufacturing process plant to a yoghurt production facility.

The new yoghurt plant consists of a new import/export bay, skim milk tanks, yoghurt pasteurizer with dosing of cream and culture, yoghurt incubation and cooling, yoghurt storage tanks, fruit dosing and delivery to packaging. Skimmed milk is supplied from the two existing pasteurizers. Furthermore, a new separate CIP plant for the yoghurt section is included.

The control system is based on Rockwell Automation CLX (ControlLogix) PLCs and Rockwell FactoryTalk SCADA for visualization. The existing system is to be updated and expanded to cater for the new expanded yoghurt process.

The project has been executed in a close cooperation between the Customer, Sycamore Process Engineering and Au2mate.

The contract was signed in May 2019, and the project execution was initiated immediately after. Software FAT (Factory Acceptance Test) of phase one was held after 5 months and the I/O test was running in parallel.  Production trials were initiated according to plan in November 2019, and commercial production started according to plan in March the following year.

The customer today has a new, flexible, and optimized control system that is scalable and ready to support the future development of the dairy.