Fonterra adds powder plant in New Zealand

GEA Process Engineering has been awarded the contract for Fonterra’s next milk powder plant in New Zealand. With a capacity to produce 30 tonnes per hour of milk powder, the plant is the same size as Fonterra’s Darfield Dryer 2 and only the second of this capacity worldwide. For GEA Process Engineering the order has a value of approximately €90 million.

It will be built near Lichfield in the heart of New Zealand’s dairy country on the North Island. “We are very happy to be building the second 30 tonne/hour plant for Fonterra,” says Niels Erik Olsen, managing director and segment board member at GEA Process Engineering. “Working together with companies like Fonterra is also inspiring: it drives us forward and sets new standards for what can be achieved.”

When the Lichfield plant is ready for the 2016-17 milking season it will process 4.4 million litres of milk and produce 700 tonnes of milk powder a day. GEA Process Engineering will undertake the project from its New Zealand-based company and the plant will utilise process technology supplied entirely by GEA Process Engineering.

“We at GEA Process Engineering New Zealand are pleased that we will have the chance to work together with Fonterra on the Lichfield Plant,” says Clint Brown, managing director of GEA Process Engineering New Zealand. “WThe two Darfield plants have been working very successfully and all of us here at GEA Process Engineering New Zealand will do our utmost to make sure that the new Lichfield spray dryer plant will also be a big success.”

Fonterra holds about 40% market share of all traded milk powder internationally. At present the company processes more than 90% of all milk produced in New Zealand. The plant at Lichfield will produce whole milk powder entirely for export with product bound for fast growing markets in the Middle East, South East Asia and China.