Murray Goulburn Co-Operative will spend $120 million on two new processing plants to supply Coles with 150 million litres of milk to annually
August 16, 2013
Murray Goulburn Co-Operative (MGC)
will spend $120 million
on the development of two greenfields processing plants capable of supplying up to 150 million packaged litres of milk
to
Coles supermarkets annually.
The state-of-the-art pasteurised milk processing plants, at Laverton in Victoria and Erskine Park in New South Wales, are expected to be commissioned by July 2014.
They will be designed by engineering consultancy pitt&sherry.
Pitt&sherry has a long standing relationship with MGG having worked with MGC to deliver one of the first large heavy vehicle fleets to use liquid natural gas as a diesel replacement.
The current investment follows a 10-year partnership between MGC and Coles announced earlier this year to provide daily pasteurised milk for the supermarket giant’s private label brands.
The plants will incorporate the world’s latest processing technology to deliver the highest possible quality standards.
Pitt& sherry’s project scope includes conceptual building design, detailed design for building and services, and site infrastructure design.
It also involves project management of the design and building process, construction management, construction administration, tender documentation and approvals processing.
Pitt&sherry National Leader – Food & Beverage Andrew Buckley says the design is flexible in accommodating for expansion, easily adaptable to the second site and provides simple disassembly at plant end of life.
Buckley says his company was approached by following the successful delivery of the Smithton Dairy Processing Facility in Tasmania.
“pitt&sherry met a rigorous design and development timeline at Smithton to accommodate the commissioning of the project in September last year, just 14 months after the project commenced,” Buckley says.
MGC’s processing plants in Victoria and NSW will also be delivered under tight time constraints.
“To aid this we have developed one above ground design that will be duplicated on both sites,” Buckley says.
“This not only reduces the design timeline, but also significantly reduces building construction time and cost.
“All project members have actively collaborated throughout the project to ensure the plants’ whole-of-life environmental, social and financial costs were considered,” he says.