"Cooling that White Gold" - Dan's Blurb

Here at O'MEARAS we've been passionately involved with farm refrigeration ever since 'you' the farmer first took ownership of the vat refrigeration over 20 years ago.  WOW and since then haven't we all seen some changes to milk cooling. Our team of fully qualified    engineers have been on the frontline of those changes, finding out better, faster and more economical ways of cooling that white gold.

MINISTRY OF PRIMARY INDUSTRIES (M.P.I)   MILK COOLING 2018 REGULATIONS

This has been a hot topic and has caused a lot of questions to be asked about what I as the farmer need to do. The regulations are quite simple.......they want you to cool your milk quicker, and have better quality milk, and why not.

EASY PEASY there are only three steps to follow and the 1st step is the most IMPORTANT one :

1.  THE MILK PLATE COOLER: very simple, check what temperature your water entering temperature is (can be taken at any point before the plate) and then check the milk in your vat temperature WITHOUT the refrigeration going (just by turning on the chiller control after the milk is over the Temperature probe).

This will give you the split i.e:  20 deg water/22 deg milk = 2 deg split

If you are getting a 2-3 degree or less split you are pretty much sorted in this area. If you are outside this split, e.g. 4 degs and up there are some big improvements, MONEY SAVINGS to be had. Saving thousands NOT hundreds of dollars in chiller running costs let along maybe meeting the regs by doing it this way alone.

2. VAT REFRIGERATION:  Is your chiller the correct size for your vat???  This is a very simple exercise for us to do as we know all the Vat cooling specs and are therefore able to spec the correct chiller for your vat size  (sorry guys SIZE does count in this area).

3. ICEBANK: This is the very last area to be addressing, it is your last resort if the above two issues haven't sorted you out for 2018. Reason being the other two combination are the more cost effective way of cooling your milk and also they would have to be done anyway to make an icebank a economic option to run.

Last but not least, don't panic!  Do your homework on all these things, ask around.  There are some nice flashy brochures out there from companies promising you the world, with all sorts of ridiculous cost savings scenarios and milk temperature claims which are just not true!