GEA to build infant formula plant in China

GEA will build an infant formula plant in China for Shijiazhuang Junlebao Dairy, with commercial production expected to begin in 2020.

The company secured an order from the Shijiazhuang Junlebao Dairy in September 2018 to supply the country’s largest spray dryer for the manufacture of infant milk formula, with a planned production capacity of six tonnes per hour.

The new plant is being built adjacent to a similar one completed in 2016, and GEA will supply wet mixing, evaporation, drying and downstream powder handling. The company is also responsible for the plant design, project execution, installation and commissioning, and automation

It will include the GEA MSD-1600 multistage spray dryer, which combines spray and fluid-bed drying in a three-stage drying process. The drying tower produces formula powder products to customer specifications and achieves an excellent agglomeration effect.

As the largest dairy processing company in the Hebei Province and the fourth-largest dairy processing company in China, Junlebao is well known for its liquid milk products, eg, yoghurt, lactobacillus beverages and UHT milk. It entered the infant formula milk powder market in 2017.

Junlebao chose to work with GEA on the new plant following their successful partnership in 2016, when GEA provided the whole production line technology and plant for infant formula milk powder for its factory in Junyuan.

“We’ve worked very closely with Junlebao for years and it has been a real pleasure to see the success the plant we built for the company two years ago has had,” said Leon Han, Head of Dairy Sales – Greater China at GEA. “The new plant will be the largest of its kind in China and we are delighted to be working with Junlebao again on this exciting project.”

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