New and improved desserts plant for Shrewsbury creamery
The team at Sycamore Process Engineering has recently completed a desserts plant upgrade for one of the UK’s leading dessert manufacturers. The creamery, which makes a huge range of desserts in a variety of shapes, sizes and flavours, had three existing dessert processing plants, each with a pasteuriser at its core. Over time the heat exchangers had become unreliable and produced inconsistent results so needed to be updated along with each of the cooling systems, to enable the award-winning desserts factory to continue to produce great product.
“We were thrilled with how testing of the new pasteurisers and cooling systems went, after the final commissioning phase, the plant ran extremely well, better than before.”
Matt Fryer, Project Engineer
While the factory continued to run 24/7, Sycamore Process Engineering was asked to design, supply, install and commission the new heat exchanger plate packs to replace the old units. The team also installed new and improved attemperated cooling systems, complete with pressure monitoring along with other plant enhancements to protect the product. The upgrade needed to take place while desserts continued to be produced and match or ideally exceed the current quality.
Matt Fryer, Project Engineer at Sycamore Process Engineering said: “We essentially had to replace the heart of the factory while it continued to run 24/7 so it was certainly an exciting project to work on. The factory produces a selection of desserts and trifles in various viscosities from jelly to cream, custards to mousses, so we had to ensure the product was looked after and it retained the same (or improved) taste, colour and feel in the mouth.
“The project was split into three phases and commissioning took place over two weeks after each installation stage. We were thrilled with how testing of the new pasteurisers and cooling systems went, after the final commissioning phase the plant ran extremely well, better than before. The team and I can certainly vouch for the chocolate mousse!”
The new cooling system had its own unique features which our engineering team incorporated into the final design. These included a break tank which you would not normally see on a cooling skid. The atmospheric break tank keeps the glycol pressure lower than that of the product at all times. This tank also allows the customer flexibility to enable a flushing of the service side of the plate pack.
For more information on how Sycamore can help you meet demand for your product and maximise operational efficiency, product versatility and quality, get in touch.