NEW BUTTER-MAKING PROCESS

Chronicle (Levin), 5 January 1948, Page 4

NEW BUTTER-MAKING PROCESS

HAMILTON, Jan. 1. The running-in stages of the Alfa butter-making plant at the Waharoa factory of the New Zealand Cooperative Dairy Company have now been completed. The plant has been closed down for the Christmas holidays, but will resume operations about tne middle of January. The Alfa butter-making mac-hine, involving revolutionary principles ot butter manufacture, comes from ,8weden-and was installed at the Waharoa factory for experimental purposes. Eecently research workers have studied the possibilities of producmg butter by different physical changes and as a result several new principles ha\-e been evolved by which butter ean be made continuously and with out the churn, as it is commonlv known. In the Alfa method the cream is pumped after separation from the inilk direet into a separator of an enclosed type which forces the cream into a "transmutor" or churning inachine. Here the butter is made immediately and its composition is controlled by a screw at the butter outlet. The cream is cooled rapidly with agitation. In the course of the agitation an inversion talces place, givmg a product witn the properties of butter. The Waikato experiments with tne macliine are under the eontrol of a technical committee and it has been cleeided when the plant resumes operations in the middle of January to allow dairy industry representatives to visit the plant, visiting being limited to one day a week in order to give seope to the operation of the plant. The advantages claimed for the continuous process of butter-making are that the holding- of cream* overnight is avoided, the use of large wooden cliurns becomes unnecessary, with consequent saving in space and sterilisation, and the. handling of butter from churn to pac.ker by ntanual labbur is avoided.Costs, •. hrfe . expectedU-;tp be joji'ej. disadvantageS 'expe'cfed;:;hV e difficulties in maintaining the uniformity of the eharaeter of the butter, and in its proper exami nation and grading, and the effect of interruptions such as meal liours and . evening instead of earlv morning work.