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The Client

Glanbia Ingredients International is Ireland’s leading dairy company, annually processing over 2 billion litres of milk into a range of ingredients for export to more than 60 countries. It is part of the Glanbia group which operates globally.

Glanbia and Milmeq have a long-established relationship, with us previously having supplied four cheese cooling tunnels to their processing sites in the US and Ireland.

The Challenge

After bringing Wexford Creamery under the Glanbia umbrella, the company sought to increase the site’s productivity.

A wider project to upgrade the site’s processing line included the requirement for a new automatic cheese cooling tunnel.

The site currently operated an old tunnel from a different provider, however this could not handle Wexford’s current throughput, let alone an increased one, and its downtime and maintenance costs were high.

Glanbia approached us to provide them with a solution.

Our Solution

Milmeq supplied a tunnel that holds 10,360 20-kilogram blocks, cooling them from 35°C to 12°C in a 24-hour cycle.

The expansion of operations at the Wexford plant included the establishment of a new, green field site for the cooling tunnel.

The enclosure was built around the tunnel, after its installation, which allowed efficiency in the design of the tunnel and ease of access for our team during construction.

The enclosure was built with extra space to allow for future extensions to the tunnel, should additional capacity be required.

The Result

Since its installation, the tunnel has been performing well and has had no unscheduled downtime.

Wexford has been able to increase its throughput to the desired levels and is consistently achieving the required temperature for the cheese on exit from the tunnel.