Miller Magazine Issue: 144 December 2021

43 MILLER / december 2021 NEWS to expand and construct a new facility at the new site secured in Akhisar. The new facility will expand Gönenli’s capacity for processing UHT- and ESL-milk for existing and new customers around the world. For this part of the plant, GEA is supplying separators and a MVR1 (mechani- cal vapor recompression) evaporator (30,000 kg/h). The Akhisar facility will home as well the first domestic production of infant nutritional formula. Zeki Sözen, Presi- dent of Gönenli Dairy, states: “Infant formula production is critical for Turkey because it is all imported. While self-suf- ficiency for food is major concern for many nations, one can easily imagine the importance of infant formula.” TEAMWORK AND CONFIDENCE IN GEA TECHNOLOGIES GEA has worked with Gönenli since 2016, providing separator technology and equipment for UHT- and ESL-milk process lines at the Balikesir plant. In June 2021, GEA won the contract to design, configure and supply the infant milk powder processing part of the new plant at Akhisar. “Teamwork and customer confidence in GEA’s tech- nology helped to achieve this important agreement” stated Serdar Gez, Managing Director of GEA Turkey. Zeki Sözen complements: “When it comes to the production of infant milk formula, where product safety and hy- giene are of great importance, GEA is the company we trust. GEA has necessary experience and many times repeated its success in this field – major key glob- al players work together with GEA. We worked with GEA Turkey on many pro- cessing lines in the past which all ended with satisfaction. We believe this project will also be a success story and milestone for Turkish dairy industry for not only in- fant formula, but also many nutrition prod- ucts manufacturing.” GEA is world-renowned for its expertise and experience in the field of infant nu- tritional formula processing, and over the last 20 years the company has configured more than 100 plants around the world. Nutritional formulas are commonly pro- duced as agglomerated powders, and the drying process is critical to generating a final product that retains precisely defined nutritional composition and physical prop- erties. GEA has applied state-of-the-art design processes to develop spray drying technology that can be configured to meet the specific requirements of each type of nutritional dairy powder. The new Gönenli Süt plant will include an MSD® 500 GEA spray dryer for infant milk formula, with a capacity greater than 2,000 kg/h of powder, and one falling film evapora- tor 2TVR1 (8,000 kg/h). GEA CYCLONES FOR REDUCING POWDER LOSS The company has also selected GEA ‘Cyclone Extra Efficiency’ (CEE) cyclone equipment, which offers high powder separation efficiency, higher yield and lower emissions, to reduce the risk of smearing, cut attrition rates and potentially improve powder size and charac- teristics. Calculations made by GEA showed that Gönenli Süt could reduce powder loss by 33 tons/year by select- ing the CEE. GEA spray dryer tailored to the exact plant requirements of Gönenli Süt is instrumental to process the infant formula with precise nutritional and physical characteristics in a safe and reproducible way. (Pic. GEA)