Business South October 2020

40 | DAIRY INDUSTRY Oceania Dairy Oceania underway with capital projects Product ready for shipping at Oceania Dairy. T T from page 38 Farm shed detergents, sanitisers and animal health products Dairy factory cleaning and sanitation chemicals Agricultural chemicals Potable, waste and industrial water treatment products P 0800 22 22 77 www.ixom.com Ixom are the market leader in food hygiene and chemical distribution in Australia & New Zealand. We have a growing presence in the dairy farm shed nationally. Delivering significant environmental benefits, the chemical recovery system will lead to less water being used on site and fewer chemicals going into Oceania’s wastewater treatment plant. “The financial benefits are that we will not have to spend as much on purchasing chemi- cals,for the cleaning process. “We will be using less raw chemicals in our CIP process and in turn end up with less chemicals passing through our wastewater treatment process.” Logan says while capital investment for the project is significant, the volume of chemicals recovered is also considerable, resulting in a very positive financial return on investment. “It’s an all round mutually beneficial project for the environment as well as economic sta- bility for Oceania,’’ he said. “This project is very close to our company’s sustainability values, with the added benefit of a financial return. “The project will pay back for many years to come as Oceania continues to successfully operate within the region.” The water reduction project taps into re- sources already available to Oceania as a dairy processing plant, without the need to draw significant volumes of bore water. Up to 87% of the raw milk received from the farm gate is water—depending on season and other variables. “At peak it could be up to 500,000 litres a day,” says Logan. “Currently that water content is captured, dispatched to the wastewater plant and then used to irrigate surrounding farmers’ land. The water is removed from the raw milk through the evaporation process. While the water is clean it has minute traces of milk in it. “ That water will be put through a reverse osmosis (R/O) membrane plant to ensure it’s the highest quality. “The water is then cleaned, UV treated, given a dose of chlorine, returned to the site’s potable water system and becomes regular use treated water.” The cleansed water will then be used in the plant cleaning process, discharged to wastewater and used to irrigate surrounding farmland. “The key driver for this project is again around conserving water and sustainabili- ty. The water extracted from cows milk will become our water supply off-setting our bore water intake.” With two existing water treatment plants, when the new water and chemical recovery system comes on stream one of the existing water treatment plants will be on standby, providing redundancy. Project management during a global pandemic has been problematic but the Oceania team has functioned well to bring it on stream. “The membranes are coming from Europe so those companies were in a bit of turmoil at the time,’’ Logan says. “Trying to maintain communication around design, tendering and ordering was challeng- ing but our project managers were exception- al in supporting our suppliers both in New Zealand and abroad. “As the rest of the world slowed down we were able to press on with some fairly major capital projects, so it was a good achievement from our capital project team.”