Dairy improves processing plant
If you love a nice cold glass of milk, and we’re not taking about the kind with little powder clumps, the Mennonites at Western Dairies have good news for you. They have acquired a pasteurizing system that should improve the shelf life–or rather the refrigerator shelf life–of their product. Janelle Chanona was in Spanish Lookout today for the introduction of the new system which means better business for Western Dairies and more time for Belizean children to enjoy their milk mustaches.
David Plett, Manager, Western Diaries
“We Mennonites in Spanish Lookout, we all grew up on raw milk. The cows are milked in the morning and it goes onto the breakfast table and we drink it raw. But it’s safer to pasteurize it. In the
batch pasteurization, we would heat it at one hundred forty five degrees and hold it for thirty minutes and that should get rid of any problems that are in the milk and should make it safe for people to drink it.”
For the just over thirty years, Western Diaries of Spanish Lookout has used batch pasteurization to get their milk products ready for the store shelves. Nevertheless the milk doesn’t always last as long as they would like. If you’ve ever had milk go bad, even if you’ve just bought it, then you’ll be happy to know that Western Diaries in Spanish Lookout has just purchased a new machine that will increase the shelf life of the milk they produce. It’s called HTST, High Temperature Short Time. It might not look impressive, but it cuts down on production costs for the company by as much as fifty percent. More importantly, it will ensure the milk “good” for a longer time.
David Plett
“The milk in this case, with the new system, the milk is going to be sixteen degrees hotter but it’s only going to be sixteen seconds and in the old batch pasteurization, the milk will probably be hot for an hour. So we believe, well we know, that it’s going to increase the shelf life because milk shouldn’t be hot too long. We normally put on ten days but we’ve had some problems, especially where the refrigeration is not very good, it hasn’t last the ten days but we will probably not add on any more days but we hope that nobody will complain anymore.”
Western Diaries has also invested in the ice cream and cheese making business, a sideline that’s prompted a one hundred percent expansion of their factory. They are also thinking about producing yogurt.
David Plett
“We’ve experienced difficulties at getting the right taste and the right product into the market. So with the assistance from the government and going through Zamarano School, we hope to be able to, when we start off, we start off in the right direction and not make too many mistakes.”
The government says other Belizean businesses might also be afraid of making a mistake by investing in the by-product industry.
Sergio Garcia, Chief Agricultural Officer
“I think the Belizean investor is a bit afraid to take some risks. But then we have to look at the other aspect that if we sell our primary product, we won’t make any money so it’s looking at the value adding of it and the industry can only grow, it can’t get smaller.”
According to Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Dan Silva, other businesses are taking advantage of the technical cooperation established between Zamarano University in Honduras and Belize. He hopes that with more high quality products on the local market, Belize will become more self-sufficient.
Daniel Silva, Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries
“Belize imports about ten percent of our G.D.P. (Gross Domestic Product) in food so it’s a hundred million dollars or more. So we are hoping that we can make a big dent on that and we will give the local producers and farmers all the support that they ask for.”
In the meantime, you’ll be able to enjoy Western Diaries milk products, processed with their new system, starting tomorrow morning. They promise things will only get better. As Western Diaries continues to use advanced technology to improve the quality of their milk, maybe the rest of us won’t need storage freezers like this one to make sure the milk stays “good”.
Janelle Chanona for News Five.
According to the Chief Agriculture Officer, Sergio Garcia, twenty million dollars of milk derived products are imported every year. Western Dairies has been supplying the local market since the 1960’s.
