From scratch to full cheese production within a year - a challenging task

A devastating fire is a nightmare to any manufacturer. The main objective when the worst happens is to rebuild, reconstruct and start production as soon as possible. Campina Holland Cheese had a big fire in Lutjewinkel, one of five production sites in the Netherlands in December 2004. The challenge was to start production again within one year. Tetra Pak gave an offer which was selected among several competitors. The first order was given in March 2005.

The mission was to build a new plant in a very short time period, and to come up with proven solutions, fulfilling Campina Holland Cheese’s needs. Campina specified their needs and the suppliers had to come up with the solution.

• The time factor was of course of utmost importance to us, Fred Raaijmakers, Plant manager at Campina Holland Cheese, says. The starting of the line was critical to us, so we had to have backup from automation engineers and other personnel. We also had to have on time delivery, proven equipment and of course the price had to be right.

The new plant building was ready in October 2005. The first cheese was produced in mid November, as promised. Installation and testing was realised in an astonishing six weeks time. To achieve this, drawings in 3D were used, pre-assembly of modules and preparations were made as far as possible in respective Tetra Pak office and testing was made in a workshop prior to full testing at Lutjewinkel.

All software is designed within the Tetra Plantmaster concept. A Tetra Pak concept describing a common structure and templates for hardware and software design, based on industrial standards like S88 and S95.

Although proven solutions had to be used, the new Lutjewinkel factory is much more advanced than the prior one.

For more information please contact: Joris Scholten Linde, Tetra Pak Processing Systems, Netherlands