Sycamore Process Engineering completes multi-million pound yoghurt production facility for Yeo Valley
Sycamore Process Engineering is thrilled to have completed a new yoghurt manufacturing facility for family-owned farming and dairy company, Yeo Valley. The new facility will enable Yeo Valley to produce the brands new Super Thick Kerned Yoghurt and deliver greater levels of efficiency and consistency.
Having Sycamore as one of our major partners has been key to delivering this project to a high standard within a tight timescale. They have worked with us collaboratively to deliver an exceptional processing facility that will produce high quality products for years to come.
Colin Hingley-Price, Head of Project Delivery at Yeo Valley
Colin Hingley-Price, Head of Project Delivery at Yeo Valley, comments: “The new capability that this project has delivered was an important step for our business. We needed to ensure we partnered with progressive, like-minded businesses, that had the foresight and ability to deliver our desire for an efficient and effective plant and meet the high product quality standards that all of our customers expect and enjoy.
“Having Sycamore as one of our major partners has been key to delivering this project to a high standard within a tight timescale. They have worked with us collaboratively to deliver an exceptional processing facility that will produce high quality products for years to come”.
The project, which kicked off a year ago, has many complexities and systems which needed to flow seamlessly with one another and work together to produce the final yoghurt to the right quality and viscosity. The plant needed to have the ability to process a significant volume of product per hour, to enable the Somerset based dairy company to keep up with increased demand.
The facility includes the installation of insulated cream holding tanks, a new pasteuriser, a new CIP system built to the latest customer codes of practice, large conical bottom yoghurt storage tanks complete with gate agitation, designed to gently handle and not damage the product, various mix-proof valve manifolds, tubular heat exchanger skids for controlling the CIP temperature and a platform linking access to the all the main components of the plant. All designed, manufactured and commissioned in Somerset by Sycamore Process Engineering.
Colin continues: “Sycamore have been instrumental in not only the design, manufacture and installation of the new process plant, but also to provide advice and experience within their field and I look forward to working with them again on further projects.”
Sustainability
A core component of the project was to increase energy efficiency when it comes to yoghurt production. The pasteuriser and ultra filtration plant both include a regeneration system which recovers heat used during the process and saves energy by not requiring as much steam and chilled water, making this design very effective and efficient. Further to that all aspects of the operation are optimised to minimise product, water, chemicals, heat and service losses through improving yields by trimming interface volumes back of both product and CIP streams.
John Cooper, Sycamore Project Engineer for the Yeo Valley project, comments: “It was a pleasure to work as an engineer on a project of this scale. The Sycamore and Yeo Valley project teams worked very well and hard together, which took it from concept idea to a completed process. Challenging as it was, the project was made even tougher at the commissioning stage due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, with huge effort and dedication from the whole team we delivered it.
“It’s great now to be able to reflect and look back on the success, coupled with some incredibly positive feedback from the team at Yeo Valley, I will look forward to working with them again in the future.”
