PUSH-BUTTON BUTTER FACTORY

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31091, 21 June 1966, Page 3

PUSH-BUTTON BUTTER FACTORY

“The Press” Special Service HAMILTON, June 20. An automatic butter factory, in which three men can produce 6| tons of butter an hour under conditions as hygienic as in an operating theatre, has been opened in Morrinsville. The push-button factory, in which every phase of butter manufacturing except for the delicate churning process is monitored from a control panel, has been built by the Morrinsville Co-operative Dairy Co. Its cost has been put at over £500,000 and it is the first such factory in New Zealand. Many of its innovations are being used in a butter factory for the first time anywhere in the world. The plant is the idea of the company’s supervising manager, Mr D. R. Bennett SIX YEARS’ PLANNING He began planning the plant six years ago and after two trips overseas, during which he visited America, Britain, Sweden, Denmark

and Japan to see how many of his ideas were already in use, his dreams became reality. Construction of the factory began two and a half years ago. A dramatic increase in production on the farms of the company’s 500 suppliers over the last three years made new plant imperative. Ten years ago the company produced 5125 tons of butter. The new plant is designed to handle 10,000 tons, which can be boosted to 20,000 tons annually. The series of modem techniques begins where tankers unload. There need be no-one on duty at the factory for the driver to unload. The cream is automatically weighed, sampled and pumped to one of six 6000-gallon holding tanks set in the wall of the “making room.” CENTRAL CONTROLS From in front of a 130-square-foot electric control panel technicians prepare thousands of gallons of cream to be churned to butter. The operator sends the cream through conventional pasteurising and deodorising equipment and returns it to a vat where it is kept for a day. Then comes the break in the automatic system. The four 3i-ton churns are con-

trolled in the orthodox way. They are the largest in the world.

When the churning is completed the roll of butter is unloaded by a huge remotely controlled trolley and carried across the room to a packing machine. The machine automatically moulds, weighs, wraps and cartons the butter in 56-pound blocks and seals the cartons in a continuous operation. A conveyor belt feeds cartons to railway trucks. Provision has been made for automatic churning at a later stage. It would make the factory fully automatic. Much of the equipment was made overseas and it was also necessary to import building materials but local supplies were used where possible. PURIFIED AIR The keynote of the design is cleanliness and conditions are so hygienic that even the bacteriological content of the air is controlled. On the American “white room” classification scale for hygiene the “making room” rates a class-two standard. The requirement for a hospital operating theatre is class four on the scale. Class one, the ultimate in hygiene, is attained in certain phases of rocketry for space projects.

A £lOO,OOO air-conditioning and purification plant is housed in the roof of the factory. It controls the temperature, humidity and purity of every cubic inch of air entering the manufacturing area. The office, laboratory and staff areas are supplied with clean air that has been conditioned to a level for human comfort.

For the normal production run of butter for the bulk of the British market the factory works under conditions which do not need such measures for hygiene. It is in the manufacturing of butter for Japanese and American markets that the ultra-hygienic functions come into their own. In such markets the hygiene requirements are stringent, to say the least. Personal hygiene of the workers comes under close scrutiny. If any of the team of six technicians suffers from a cold or any contagious disease he is replaced by another. Septic cuts or sores also prevent the men from entering the manufacturing area. Before starting work the technicians have a shower, wash their hands in sterilisers and put on sterilised clothing and footwear. The six men replace 14

workers who were previously required. To avoid labour complications the company reached agreement with the Dairy Workers’ Union on the reduction in the work force. No man will lose his job as a result of the new system. The total staff of the factory is 10—manager, six technicians, laboratory worker, receptionist and a woman for general duties. Where previously men armed with scrubbing brushes and buckets of water spent hours cleaning churns, vats and pipes, now one man, a computer and an ingenious "in place” cleaning system will do a thorough, fast job on the new equipment. CLEANING BY COMPUTER Installed alongside the control panel, the computer is programmed to draw adds, cleansers, water and sterilisers from basement vats and pump each in its proper sequence and quantity through the system. The factory, an unpretentious building of 40,000 square feet, is of radical design. It is a structure of portal steel filled with hollow clay blocks. The outer cladding needs no painting and is resistant to the heat of the sun. Noise has been made acceptable by special treatment.