Fluid engineering expertise for UK dairy industry

FMA Process Engineering has created quite a name for itself within the dairy industry, by offering a range of project management, engineering design, management reporting and process control services

Offering a wide range of project management, engineering design, management reporting and process control services to mainly blue chip clients in the field of "hygienic liquid processing", Lichfield-based FMA Process Engineering has created quite a name for itself within the dairy industry.

"Following early success with several UK dairies - and involving such projects as cleaning in place and milk process systems - in the late 1980s - FMA decided to firmly establish its credentials for process design, supply and implementation skills right across the dairy sector," says the company Commercial Director, Terry Clough.

"Until this time, the FMA field of experience had been largely associated with the brewery industry," added Clough.

"Joining FMA as Process Engineering Manager in 1989 from Unigate Dairies, I was given the specific task of developing the scale of our dairy projects, using the experience I had gained at Unigate to provide the company with a valuable insight into the very real issues concerning large-scale dairy sites".

During the early Nineties - and with Clough's guidance - FMA was successful in securing several contracts with British dairies, the most notable of which was a major process control task for Unigate in Folkestone.

Embracing all plant functions from raw milk intake, storage and pasteurisation, through to finished milk storage, routing and filling, the contract provided a perfect demonstration of complete turnkey abilities, design, installation and commissioning skills - whilst minimising impact on production during commissioning.

Since that time, a whole range of other dairy industry projects, encompassing both process control and management reporting functions have followed.

For Unigate in particular, FMA have undertaken everything from complete plant control to upgrades of raw milk intake to final filling; complete site redevelopment programmes, CIP and reclaim facilities, intake cooling and product dispatch, fully automatic pasteurisation control systems and pasteuriser/ homogeniser/ blender installations.

Whilst only last year, in a contract worth an estimated 30 percent of the total GBP39m overall investment, FMA was responsible for all aspects of process design and supply - including state of the art process control and data logging systems implementation - at the prestigious Dairy Crest Severnside Super Dairy development in Gloucestershire.

The drive towards greater production efficiencies, reduced downtime and less product wastage is common across all industries and the dairy sector is no exception.

Consequently, at the same time as FMA was establishing a name for itself in dairy process control and data delivery, large-scale dairy-industry rationalisation was also taking place.

"Throughout the Nineties, the movement of equipment from one site to another was commonplace; the upgrading of existing capacities was required and new pasteurisers were being installed - all of which led to a considerable amount of work on new systems and in further reducing milk wastage," comments Terry Clough.

With today's focus towards plant consolidation - typified by the recent announcement from Arla and Express Dairies - FMA is also becoming increasingly involved in helping to amalgamate plants, maximise re-use and re-engineering of existing valuable plant and equipment.

The merger of Unigate and Dairy Crest and the subsequent development of Severnside is a typical example of how these levels of expertise can often be best utilised.

As manufacturing industries of all kinds constantly seek to improve product traceability, and reduce costly plant downtime, FMA have become industry experts in the provision of process control technology and real-time data collection systems that have helped dairies of all sizes embrace the very highest quality standards.

By achieving BS5750 (now ISO 9001) in 1990, FMA was able to demonstrate to potential customers that it was wholly accountable and able to deliver totally consistent solutions.

Today, quality standards are increasingly market-driven and FMA continues to directly influence the way in which standards are rising.

This has been perhaps best demonstrated via the delivery of process systems geared to providing vital data at shop floor level right through to vertically-structured systems encompassing SCADA, Management Execution Systems (MES) and interfacing with complex Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP) across multiple production sites.

"Via innovative software solutions, efficient product routing and the implementation of MES reporting, FMA is able to instil an environment of enhanced plant control and information delivery, where manufacturers can capture vital plant information by both time and event, where precise volume monitoring can highlight losses against inventory and where superior product tracking provides total product genealogy," concludes Terry Clough.

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