2017-04-24
THE NETHERLANDS
Green cheese dairy
Dutch cheese manufacturer CONO Kaasmakers had a clear objective — to build the greenest dairy in the world. To realize the ambition the company worked closely with technical suppliers such as Tetra Pak.
THE DUTCH COOPERATIVE CONO Kaasmakers was founded more than 100 years ago, but its mission is as modern as can be: to create tasty, fair trade cheese of the best quality, paying close attention to animal welfare and the environment and paying a fair milk price to its 460 farmers.
Out-dated equipment
Since CONO Kaasmakers’ existing cheese dairy had out-dated equipment from the eighties and a 15-20 per cent increase in milk deliveries from the cooperative’s farmers was expected when the EU milk quota was ended in 2015, the company decided to build a completely new production facility that would replace the existing dairy.
“With over a century of responsible production in our genes, we wanted to build the greenest dairy in the world,” says Wim Betten, CEO, CONO Kaasmakers. “To live up to this ambition, we decided to set up collaboration with our suppliers as partners in building a sustainable solution. Collaboration is all about people and sharing knowledge, and together with our partners we wanted to not only secure the sustainability of our new dairy, but also bring environmental value to the entire chain, from cow to cheese.”
THE COOPERATIVE HAS invested 80 million euros in the new dairy. CONO Kaasmakers has partnered with seven companies or organisations, including Tetra Pak, which was given the responsibility to deliver and install a complete processing solution for the new plant with an order value of more than 20 million euros.
“We chose Tetra Pak as a partner in designing the new cheese factory with sustainability as a key objective, together with cheese quality, hygiene and food and labour safety,” says Betten. “With our new cheese dairy, our ambition is to become completely climate neutral, where we contribute to the future in a way that suits our environment – and where we remain a leader in the field of taste as well as sustainability.”
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