Full Production Achieved by Dry Butter-fat Plant

Taranaki Daily News, 2 September 1942, Page 2

Full Production Achieved by Dry Butter-fat Plant

Value of operations to dairy industry. Auckland, Sept. 1. The dry butterfat plant installed at King's wharf, Auckland, under the control of the Internal Marketing Division, which recently commehced operations, is now in full production. The one complete unit installed is working three eight-hour shifts daily for five days each week. The installation follows the successful development of this process by the Dairy Research Institute at Palmerston North, where full scale commercial production was continued for five months early this year. Improvements in the technique and design of equipment have been incorporated in the new plant. The plant is ideally situated for dry butterfat manufacture, for butter can be loaded directly from rail way trucks and the process ed article can be. taken intoi store with the minimum of handling. The factory will eventually operate as a twounit plant and have an annual production capacity of 12,000 tons of butterfatThe second unit is now under construction. Refrigeration Unnecessary. The conversion of butter to dry butterfat will effect a saving of from 3 to 5 per cent in shipping space required, but the main feature of the product is that it can be carried without refrigeration, which is'essential when butter is shipped through the tropics. The new process Lsf 'important in that it provides for the disposal of whey butter, for which, apart from the small local consumption, there has been no other outlet. Without this process all last season's surplus whey butter and that of the present season would have been. a dead loss to the industry. The greater part of the dry butterfat already manufactured has been forward - ed to the United Kingdom, but several shipments have also been sent to the Middle East for the New Zealand troops, and shipments are being made to the fighting forces in the Pacific area. The future of dry butterfat after the war is as yet obscure, but the product is stated to be ideally suited for export to tropical countries and for manufacturing purposes, sucb as ice cream, pastry goods and the like. Research is proceeding both in New Zealand and in the United Kingdom in the reconstitution of dry butterfat to butter by incorporating water, salt and skim-nullc solids which are removed in the drying process.