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The Client

Glanbia Foods is the largest American-style cheese manufacturer in the United States, with four processing facilities located throughout Idaho, including its headquarters in Twin Falls.

The Challenge

Glanbia requires quick chilling of its cheddar cheese produced in the hot formed cheese block tower process, to control colour, flavour and consistency of shape of the blocks.

At their Twin Falls site, Glanbia had another manufacturer’s cooling tunnel, however this was ageing and no longer had sufficient capacity for the volumes being produced by the plant.

They engaged Milmeq to provide a new MILMEQ® Cheese Cooling Tunnel to meet their increased production volume and improve the efficiency of their operations.

Our Solution

Milmeq designed, manufactured and installed a MILMEQ® Cheese Cooling Tunnel specifically to meet the needs of Glanbia Foods.

The tunnel chills 20 kilogram (40 pound) blocks of cheese in cardboard cartons from 35°C (95°F) to 10°C (60°F) in a 24 hour cooling cycle.
It has a capacity of 3,240 blocks per day.

It is a fully automated first in, first out system, providing complete hands-free operation with conveyors delivering blocks to the tunnel, indexing, loading and unloading, with equal retention time for each block. Spacing between the cartons ensures each block is subjected to identical airflow and temperature, to maintain product consistency.

The Result

Since its installation in 2011, the tunnel has been operating reliably and delivering consistently high quality product.

Glanbia has also engaged us to install further cheese cooling tunnels for their operations in Ireland and for their subsidiary, Southwest Cheese.