Inside the $235 million dryer at Fonterra's Pahiatua plant.
Inside the $235 million dryer at Fonterra's Pahiatua plant.
With the new $235 million Fonterra wholemilk dryer at Pahiatua now being commissioned, Dannevirke News took the opportunity to tour the innovative plant last week.
The commissioning of Fonterra's new multimillion dollar powder plant at Pahiatua means the end of the familiar milk train from Oringi, south of Dannevirke.
The milk train finished shipping milk from Oringi to Hawera in January, as the new $235 million dryer at Pahiatua will mean the site will be able to take all the milk from dairy farms from as far north as Wairoa and south to Wellington.
"Our production capacity will increase by 2.4 million litres a day to a high of 3.8 million litres at the peak of the dairy season," Bill Boakes, site manager at Pahiatua, said.
The Pahiatua site will produce 140,000 tonnes of wholemilk powder, with the plant believed to be a New Zealand and world first in being able to withstand a one-in-2500-year earthquake because of its triple-pendulum base isolation system, which allows the plant to move 400cm in each direction on 50 rubber isolators, each weighing 3 tonnes.
"We're on time and looking good," Mr Boakes said. "As the new season milk flows into the site, P2 will be up first, followed by the new P3 and then P1."
A big feature of the new plant has been the drive to reduce its environmental footprint, Mr Boakes said.
Bill Boakes the plant's site manager.
"There are also significant efficiencies in running a bigger plant and we will be able to export another 85,000 tonnes from the new plant, with Tauranga a growing port for Fonterra," he said.
From the new P3 plant, which is a maze of stainless steel and a lights-out packing unit, another world-leading innovation will see robots stacking the 25kg bags of milk powder with four, unmanned, automatic-guided vehicles taking the pallets from the product line to the marshalling area, 250 metres away. "This is awesome, whizz bang stuff," Gary Reynolds, project manager from Auckland-based company GEA Process Engineering, said.
The 21,000 sq m distribution centre has a separate environmental load out store which can take 10 railway wagons inside, with 30 wagons shipped out daily.
Fonterra will use KiwiRail for shunter services at the site and Mr Reynolds said, with 20 of these projects now under his belt, this is the calmest he has ever been.
"Things have been going pretty well," he said.
Construction a boost for the district
•Known as Project Leonardo, at the peak of construction 500 people were employed.
•Work is due to be completed in December this year and currently between 350 and 400 people continue to be employed on the construction of the powder plant, the new distribution centre and the reverse osmosis water plant.
•The dryer is the size of three rugby fields and the equivalent of 15 storeys high.
•It has taken 750,000 man hours to build P3.
•The new distribution centre has the capacity to hold 25 per cent of the site's annual 140,000 tonne wholemilk powder make, stored on 18,000 pallets, stacked five high. At 180m long and 130m wide, natural light is supplemented by 150 LED lights.
•The former Tui butter factory, which closed in 1996, has been converted into a New Zealand first for Fonterra - a reverse osmosis water plant - turning dirty "cow water" into fresh water to be re-used in manufacturing. Two million litres of water comes in with the milk and 90 per cent is being recycled, the remaining 10 per cent going off site to a waste water plant before being spread on paddocks.
•Nine pours of 3500 cu m of concrete from 750 ready mix concrete trucks, have gone into the build. These came from Prenters in Dannevirke and Pahiatua and Higgins in Palmerston North.
