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09.11.2015
World’s first earthquake-proof milk drying plant
GEA Group, with headquarters in Düsseldorf, Germany, has built a unique whole-milk drying plant for Fonterra in New Zealand. It is located at Pahiatua on an earthquake fault line and has been designed to withstand a major quake without damage. As well as providing all the processing equipment, GEA was contracted as a consortium to provide the building work for the project with its partner Ebert Construction. There are only a handful of other structures in New Zealand that are protected in this way including the parliament building in Wellington and the country’s national museum. For a commercial plant, this is a first.
The company supplied all the processing equipment including: milk reception, storage, wet processing including standardisation and homogenisation, evaporation, drying, powder handling, packing and water recovery. The whole plant weighs upwards of 20,000t, including its 40m high drying tower, all of which sits on 50 triple friction pendulum bearings that will allow the whole construction to move up to 900mm in any lateral direction, allowing the building to withstand a 1/2500 year event without losing its structural integrity. Although the main building is base isolated the ancillary structures are not, which gave GEA some engineering challenges. For example every supply line for steam, acid, milk, gas, chemicals or electricity has to be able to withstand the building moving by up to 900mm in any plane. www.gea.com
The new Fonterra milk drying plant
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