High-tech rendering

Press, 9 October 1987, Page 30

High-tech rendering

Tbe new $7 million rendering plant at Kaiapoi is missing something — smell. The “high-tech” plant uses a low temperature system which should eliminate offensive odours usually associated with rendering. C. S. Stevens and Company, Ltd, built the plant to replace the one at Haytons Road, Sockbum. It had been built near the turn of the century and was developing problems with its age. The old plant was unable to handle all the material the company produced and some had been sent to C.F.M.’s rendering plant for processing. The new plant is able to take all the material from the C. S. Stevens abbatoir and cutting plant at Sockburn, the company’s Ashley and Kaiapoi works, and bones from butchers’ shops a round Christchurch. The low temperature system, developed by the Meat Industry Research Institute of New Zealand, was chosen by the company in late December, engineering work began in January, and the first pour of concrete

was made in late February. Trials at the new plant began in late September. It has a design capacity of 15 tonnes an hour of raw material. Mr Murray Selby, the project engineer, said the new plant was more efficient, used less energy, and produced a better product than the old system. It also had a lower capital cost and needed fewer people to run it. The industrial and personnel safety manager at the Kaiapoi works, Mr Tony Rule, said some of the Hayton’s Road staff had been relocated at the new site while others had been absorbed into the Sockbum works. Some existing employees at Kaiapoi had also been transferred to the rendering plant. The drying process for the meat meal and blood and bone produced there is fired by Liquefied Petroleum Gas. L.P.G. is also used to keep the 600 tonnes of tallow, which can be stored on site, in a liquid state. The old plant had used oil, then coal, to provide the heat needed during the whole render-

ing process. The commissioning of the new plant was seen as significant for the future of the C. S. Stevens Group operations in Canterbury, by the group’s owners, Alliance Freezing Company. The chief executive of Alliance, Mr Sandy Murdoch, said the designing, building, and commissioning of the new rendering plant in less than 12 months had been a “real achievement” The opening of the plant also signalled the intentions which Alliance had for the Stevens operation. “We did not buy C. S. Stevens Group with the intention of closing down the operations. The new rendering plant has the latest technology available and a capacity to more than adequately service the needs of our operation in Christchurch,” he said. “The end product will be of the highest quality which should be reflected in better market returns. These benefits can be passed on to the farmer,” said Mr Murdoch.