BBI members were recently able to visit the modern Dairy of Robert Wiseman situated at Droitwich Spa. The Dairy was built on a 16 acre green field site during the period from 1999 to 2001 as a £40m investment known as the Millennium Dairy Project. Further development was carried out during 2006 to increase the capacity to its current production level of over 600m litres p.a.

External view of Robert Wiseman Dairy at Droitwich Spa

The visit was hosted by John Burnett, Site Manager and John during his introduction described the site facilities and also gave details of its performance and culture. John explained that the start of the operation involves the intake of 12 different milk types e.g. Welsh Milk, West Country Milk and finishes by despatching finished milk containers to major multiples such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

The Intake system involves unloading tankers of 25,000 litre capacity on a 24 hr basis feeding to 10 Silos each of 250,000 litre capacity and chilled to 1˚C, with continuous agitation. Each Tanker is weighed and its contents checked particularly for taste and quality after which the contents are discharged, the tanker then reweighed and the subjected to C.I.P. for 45 mins.

The next stage of the operation is for milk to be fed into a special milk room where the raw milk is pasteurised or converted to cream. This area also contains the very important centralised C I P unit used for sterilising all the production equipment within the plant.

Members were given a full tour of the Plant. There is an in-house bottle manufacturing facility sited in a separate area, managed and run by a separate company. The HDPE bottles are produced on six blow moulding machines and are fed direct to the filling area. A great deal of attention has been paid to both empty and full bottle flow along conveyors as well as addressing the complexity of having to handle bottle sizes ranging from 1 pint to 6 pint. As well as bottle flow the whole operation is controlled centrally by a computerised management information system located in the Quality Control area of the plant. The programme deals with real time information and also feeds information to critical areas, for example printing codes on to bottles to give individual traceability. Each bottle is camera inspected for shape and applied codes.

There are 7 bottling lines in the plant and each line revolves around Stork weigh fillers. With a variety of 40 head and 50 head fillers these machines are capable of filling up to 300 b.p.m. for one pint bottles. Each filling cycle consists of weighing the empty bottle, there follows a three phase bottle fill until the predicted weight has been achieved and the container is then finally reweighed to set average fill standards for the machine. These Ultra Clean Dairy fillers are enclosed and designated as clean fillers with positive air pressure through HEPA filters as well as a sophisticated CIP system. Bottle Sleeves are applied prior to filling; there is a bank of sleeving machines sited on a mezzanine floor enabling a more efficient use of space. Filled bottles are conveyed to trolley packers, there are two per line. The trolley packing is carried out in a chill room where the temperature is held between 2 to 4˚C and the caged trolleys are then loaded directly to waiting vehicles and despatched to customers.

Production lines at Droitwich Spa

The Droitwich Dairy is a “state of the art” operation and is described as the most advanced milk production facility in Europe and is operated by a well motivated workforce. This was apparent on our tour and demonstrated by the high attention to hygiene. The BBI are indebted to Robert Wiseman for allowing our members to visit their operation. John Yates BBI General Secretary rounded off proceedings by thanking John Burnett for an extremely interesting visit.

Visit Robert Wiseman website....... http://www.wiseman-dairies.co.uk

Brian Gibbs