When Bucks (England)-based family-run business Tims Dairy were looking to improve the quality of their cleaning in place systems as well as increasing the filling speed on their organic bio yoghurts line they didn’t have to look far.  

A long working relationship with Aylesbury-based Masterfil, the leaders in producing filling and capping machines, led to the development of a flowmeter filler that met some demanding criteria.
Tims Dairy began life 45 years ago in Tottenham, North London, where the company supplied a small range of natural products including yoghurt to ethnic food bars, convenience stores and restaurants.    An increased interest by the public in healthy eating made yoghurt gain in popularity.   The company expanded and in 1996 opened their production site in Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, retaining their London base for distribution.
Tims Dairy has gone from strength to strength and is now a major producer of own-label and contract-packed cultured milk products, supplying the multitudes with Biyo, a range of organic bio yoghurt drinks available in a variety of flavours including blueberry, strawberry, banana, chocolate and peach.
 Its natural yoghurt range is available from very low fat to thick and creamy.  It also supplies the catering industry with the base for dips and crème fraiche.
Realising that the risk of contamination on its non-preserved organic products was high, the company knew that its existing two-head piston filler, which had caused bacterial problems in the past, was not right for the job.    Tims needed to re-think and improve the security of its cleaning systems.
 “Our main criteria was ease and security of CIP; added to that we wanted to increase the speed of the line.  We did our research,” said Peter Timotheou, director of Tims Dairy.”  “We were incredibly specific about our needs.  We knew Masterfil well having used two of their single-head semi-automatic machines.  Quite frankly, Masterfil worked hard with us to develop a flowmeter machine that does the job.”
The filler developed by Masterfil is fed by a pressure vessel that is cleaned by a spray ball.   The six-head machine can fill at a speed of 60 bottles per minute and there is room for expansion as it is built to accommodate extra heads to allow filling at a speed of 120 per minute.  The flexible filler can easily be adjusted to meet the needs of different styles of packaging.
Currently running two days a week the machine fills the company’s 250 ml organic Biyo range and needs to be cleaned after every use.  The Masterfil software control programme on the machine is used to set the volume, fill and nozzle-rise speeds, with the ability to save up to 100 product profiles.   The filler CIP/SIP system is integrated with the dairy system offering a choice of joint cleaning and sterilisation with the benefits of convenience and shortened down time, or separate cleaning and sterilisation options which allow flexibility.
“The Masterfil machine has exceeded expectations,” said Peter. “The ease of changeover has improved, hygiene standards are very high and the shelf life of our non-preserved products has increased to 28 days which is exceptional.”
   A fault-finding option, linked directly to Masterfil’s Aylesbury base, is built-in allowing problems to be dealt with immediately online, preventing lengthy downtime, expense and inconvenience. This characteristic has proved invaluable as shown by work achieved by Masterfil with companies in Pakistan and the USA.  
“I am very pleased with the results of this filler. Masterfil had to meet some stringent criteria which were absolutely essential for the safety of this dairy product,” said Brian Potiphar, UK sales director, Masterfil.  “The success of this project is an example of what can be achieved when two companies have a healthy working relationship, something I would say that Masterfil is good at developing and maintaining.”