GEA to build dairy powder plant in Angola
Silvestre Tulumba Investimentos (STI) in Angola has chosen GEA for the building of a turnkey dairy powder packing plant. The project, which is due for completion in 2018, is part of a US$350 million (€307m) industrial hub development, backed by the Angolan government that will create 2,000 jobs in the region over the next four years.
The new packing line for infant formula is a diversification for STI. The new plant sources raw ingredients in 25kg bags. The outer bags are then stripped to help prevent contamination in the plant, and fills a 2,000-litre mixer in line with the company’s preferred recipe. Both the cans and the product are pre-gassed with inert gas to purge oxygen before entering the GEA IFS-1A can filler that fills 1kg (127mm diameter) cans at a rate of 15 cans per minute.
The GEA canning line includes: manual depalletising; internal can cleaning; UV tunnel; can coding; a manual over-capping station; a manual secondary packaging station into standard corrugated cases with tape sealer; case coding; and a manual palletising station.
Michael Marren, regional sales manager for GEA Application Centre Dairy, says, “This is an interesting project as the customer has no previous experience in this market. We are able to use our experience in the sector, and our scope of supply, to develop a complete mixing and filling system for STI that meets their needs. It’s a complete turnkey solution so we own the performance guarantees for both linked systems and for achieving the required residual oxygen (RO) level in the final packed product.”
GEA is also supplying equipment and solutions for other projects within the industrial hub including plants for the production of: UHT milk, juice, yogurt, sweetened condensed milk, cheese and butter. The hub project also includes the building of a brewery and water processing plant.
