Regional and global synergies produce triple-win in central France
Sometimes global meets regional in interesting ways, depending on lines of trust that stretch out over time and space. Soubrier Besse, a fifth-generation family-owned business located in the Central Massif region of France, has been a loyal Tetra Pak integrator for more than 30 years.
With 70 employees, they design, install and maintain food processing installations for the dairy and cheese industry in their mountainous region, where they cater to the special needs of small and medium-sized producers. As part of their engineering and service solutions, Soubrier Besse offers a range of Tetra Pak high-speed separators, homogenizers, heat exchangers, and numerous other plant components.
Typical challenges involve increasing capacity and upgrading processing lines, but assignments sometimes stretch into the nuances of small-scale production of specialty cheeses, for example. One of their customers brought us a challenge involving sheep milk pre-treatment, in which spores had to be removed via bacteria & spores removal. Butas sheep milk is very special, the process also had to take into account the quality of the incoming milk during different seasons of the year.
Consultations and calculations provided by our separator support in Lund, Sweden, were able to show that the functionality and volume could be provided by one of our smaller separator models, if it were combined with an outgoing milk recycling circuit – and they also provided the correct settings.
“In our part of France, we do things in a particular way with our cheeses,” says Jean- Jacques Besse, managing director and owner of Soubrier Besse. “So it’s good to know that Tetra Pak can back up their premium equipment sizing with calculations that take into account our specific requirements. Our dairy customers benefit from Tetra Pak’s support know-how and innovations, as well as their performance guarantees.” There are additional benefits for integrators like Soubrier Besse. Single-sourcing component procurement offers more competitive pricing, confidence and trust. In addition, with a single vendor for technical tasks and services, the need for staff training is minimal, and any updates or upgrades will be more comprehensive and efficient.
So there is a strong long-term synergy based on combining Soubrier Besse’s local establishment, their engineering and service capabilities, with Tetra Pak local and global product expertise, brand reputation and innovation.
“Soubrier Besse has extended our reach to customers we wouldn’t ordinarily meet,” says Antony Isidro, Key Component Sales Manager for France/Benelux. “Their relationships to dairy producers in the area have been built on trust going back generations. And now Tetra Pak is part of that chain of trust as well, building on product safety and peace of mind. It’s a win- win-win situation.”
