A complete process cheese production plant of Almarai, the Middle East’s top dairy and food brand, will begin operations by mid-2005.

Also, Almarai, which is investing $160 million overall for state-of-the-art process technology, has selected the Wild Group to provide technology for mixing operations related to juices, nectars and still beverages containing juice. 
The cheese plant, with a design output of approximately 10 tonnes per hour of different process cheese products, consists of powder-handling facilities with automatic dosing to four blending lines; four parallel lines of cheese and butter handling; four parallel lines of cheese blenders and four continuous UHT lines for thermal treatment into process cheese.
Working on the plant is the Sympak Group, whose turnkey contract includes engineering, equipment supply, installation, commissioning, start-up and acceptance runs.
The group is utilising the expertise of its member companies Stephan, Corazza, RC and Sympak Bottling and Canning.
The cheese will be packed in portions and in jars. The contract scope includes CIP cleaning of the processing plant, container cleaning, utilities units, an interconnecting piping system for both products and utilities and laboratory equipment including a UHT pilot plant.
The plant will be equipped with a highly sophisticated process data and recipe automation system, with management information features and the possibility to communicate with the existing ERP systems, together with bus networks for the equipment communication and data handling. The plant operations will be performed with state-of-the-art touch screens with visualisation.
The Wild Group’s Indag Wild Process Technology was selected by Almarai to provide a customised state-of-the-art dosing and mixing technology known as the Heidelberger Mixer (HD-Mixer). The system will significantly increase Almarai’s efficiency by simplifying the process for finished juice, nectars and still beverages containing juice.
“This innovative system consists of a concentrate tank storage station for pre-standardisation and storing of juice concentrates, a liquid sugar tank storage station, a small-quantity station for preparing and solving powdered ingredients and two dosing and mixing stations,” a Wild Group spokesman said.
“The centralised juice mixing system is capable of supplying several filling lines while automatically dosing and mixing for high-quality production requirements. High product safety is also guaranteed with these process systems and it is simple for operating staff to use.”