More and more farmers are looking at ways of diversifying their farms and adding value to their milk.
There is also a greater focus on sustainability and the need to support dairy farmers to ensure they get a fair income for their produce.
This has lead to an increase of milk vending businesses and farmers becoming artisan producers and processing their milk into cheese, ice-cream or yoghurt.
“Over the past few years we saw a huge increase in the amount of enquiries for milk vending,” said Paul Sheehan, managing director of Co. Limerick-based company Unison Process Solutions.
“Currently 90% of the customers with a milk vending business in Ireland are using a Unison compact pasteuriser.
“The more customers we worked with for vending made us realise that we could create a complete system that would automate the process even further and make milk vending a very easy diversification for farmers.”
Milk vending machines
Unison is an expert in dairy processing and has helped dozens of dairy farmers in Ireland and the UK to set up and succeed in selling their milk direct to their customers.
A new product that the company has added to its portfolio is the Smart Microdairy, a plug-and-play solution which includes everything you need to start milk vending.
The Smart Microdairy, patented by Unison, is an innovative complete hygienic pasteurising solution.
The unit is built to department of agriculture standards and does not require any additional building; all that is required is a concrete base, internet, electricity, drainage and water supply.
This plug-and-play Microdairy can be installed on-farm in one day and includes everything the farmer requires to pasteurise and dispense their milk.
Automated system
The main benefit of the Smart Microdairy is that it does not require the farmer to manually operate the pasteuriser or to even enter the processing room.
The process is started by a simple touch of a button on a phone/tablet from outside the unit.
This is a huge change from the current process where farmers would have to change from their farm clothes into a gown, hat and shoe covers, and ensure they are keeping to all HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) guidelines when entering the unit.
With the Smart Microdairy, Unison has streamlined the process so that it requires ten times less labour, is a much quicker process, and health and safety standards are easier to adhere to.
Added to the ease of use, the unit comes with a built-in milk dispenser that is connected to the milk tanks.
This means that heavy tanks no longer need to be moved for vending or cleaning.
In comparison to batch pasteurising, with the Smart Microdairy, farmers who are milk vending will no longer have to spend hours processing, cleaning and moving tanks.
The Smart Microdairy is three times faster, requires ten times less labour and is much more economical – generating six and a half times less operational costs, along with less energy use and water usage.
Discussing the system’s ease of use, Paul said: “With the Smart Microdairy we have taken feedback from our existing milk vending customers, along with department of agriculture, to build a unit that includes everything required for milk vending.
“We have made the system as user-friendly as possible so that dairy farmers no longer have to climb hurdles to be able to set up a business where they are selling directly to customers and have a very easy route to getting more value for their milk.
“We have recently launched the system and are installing units in Ireland in the coming weeks.
“We have also expanded our production and service team in the past few months to ensure that we can increase our production capacity and offer our customers a high level of support both throughout the setup process and into the future,” said Paul.
To take the first step towards getting more value for your milk, contact Unison at: [email protected]; or +353 (0)61 422 224.
Unison
Unison Process Solutions is an expert in dairy processing with over 40 years of experience with pasteurisation.
It is a one-stop-shop for all the advice and equipment you need to start processing, and sell direct; Unison has helped dairy farmers from all over Ireland and the UK to get more value from their milk.
The company’s main aim is making dairy farmers production as user-friendly and cost-effective as possible.
It has a range of innovative equipment including continuous flow (HTST) pasteurisers, milk vending machines, chillers and complete hygienic room solutions.
“Over 10 years ago we first started manufacturing compact pasteurisers for artisan producers,” said Paul Sheehan.
“The reason we developed these was because we spoke to so many dairy farmers who were interested in processing their own milk, but were not able to commit the time and labour to batch pasteurisation and they could not find a continuous flow pasteuriser that fit their needs and budget.
“Anything that had the automation they required was much larger than required and very expensive.”
Unison compact pasteurisers were developed with these producers in mind. Unison has concentrated on developing systems which are user-friendly, fully automatic and cost effective.
Through its 10 years of tweaks and improvements to the models, Unison now has a range of innovative plug-and-play compact pasteurisers that are the perfect solution for on-farm processing.
“Unison pasteurisers are 100% automatic with one-touch operation. Using the Continuous HTST (High Temperature, Short Time) method of pasteurisation, our pasteurisers are three times faster, require 10 times less labour and are more economical (6.5 x lower operational costs along with less energy and water usage) than traditional batch pasteurisers.
“Our compact pasteuriser customers range from small to medium processors (100-2,000L/hr) who are processing milk for vending, bottling, cheese, yoghurt, ice-cream and more,” said Paul.
For more information on Unison and its products, click here.
