New whey drying plant for Hochwald

Hochwald of Germany has inaugurated its production facility for the production of demineralised whey powder. The new production plant in Hünfeld is supplying the baby and infant food industry.

Lucia Puttrich, the Hessian Minister for Federal and European Affairs, as well as local political representatives, took part in the solemn inauguration ceremony. With the symbolic handover of a key, Hochwald’s managing directors, Karl Eismann and Detlef Latka, opened the new production plant.

Around €90 million has been invested in the Hünfeld site, including the drying plant, the expansion of the cheese plant and a new industrial wastewater treatment plant. A plant for the production of skimmed milk concentrate, which also supplies the baby and infant food industry, was installed in parallel at the Hochwald site in nearby Hungen. In total, Hochwald now employs approximately 460 staff and has about 1,400 milk producers supplying these locations with milk. The new plant processes the whey from the Hochwald cheese plant into a precursor of baby and infant food. The desalinated whey concentrate is supplied to the food processing industry either as a liquid or dried in powder form.

Detlef Latka, chief financial officer at Hochwald, says, “The decision to open up a new field of business for Hochwald to provide more added value with this plant was absolutely the right one. The future of our company does not lie in the commodity sector but, given the poor market situation, in further processing and thus higher in the value-added chain.”