IDM ¦ Site Report
The power of family
Krones group has realized TINE’s new dairy plant
Krones’ subsidiary Milkron has completed
its largest project to date:
planning and engineering a new
dairy for TINE in Bergen, Norway.
The project also integrates expertise
from Krones, Evoguard, HST, and Syskron.
The owners of TINE, Norway's biggest producer
of dairy products, know each of their
cows by name. And it's no wonder: TINE is a
cooperative, owned primarily by the farmers
who supply the company with raw milk. For the
construction of its new dairy in Bergen, TINE has
opted to rely on the power of family – purchasing
its process technology from the Krones family
of companies.
TINE's current structure goes back to the
19th century, when several farmers joined together
to process their raw milk. Over time,
the cooperative has grown its membership,
which now includes around 10,000 farmers
across Norway. “Our aim is to process and
distribute our members' milk – and thus ensure
sustainable income for local farmers,” explains
Mårten Haukjem, manager of the dairy
plant in Bergen.
Every afternoon, some eight milk tankers
roll up with the raw milk collected from
local dairy farms. “Logistics are certainly a
challenge for us. Norwegian farms tend to
be far apart from each other and many are
very remote,” explains Mårten Haukjem.
Jörgen is one such dairy farmer. Although
his farm is only about 20 kilometers from
TINE's new plant, it takes the milk tanker
a solid 45 minutes to make the trip along
curving roads that sometimes narrow to
just one lane. Jörgen's 25 dairy cows spend
summers at pasture and winters in the barn.
His farm represents a typical dairy farm in
Norway. Because of the country's topography
– a mix of deep fjords and towering
mountains – most Norwegian dairy farms
are relatively small. The average dairy farmer
has 22 hectares and 24 cows.
Market leader in Norway
While TINE's company structure and atmosphere
recall a large extended family, the
company's numbers are like those of a large
corporation. With annual revenue of 2,250
million euros in 2019, TINE is the leading
producer of dairy products in Norway. Besides
a wide variety of cheeses, the company
also produces liquid dairy products.
The new dairy plant in Bergen supplies
the entire region with fresh milk, cream, and
fruit juices. Although the plant's daily production
capacity of 300,000 liters is relatively
small, this facility is the most modern of the
company's 32 plants. “Our old dairy plant
was built in the 1950s and was no longer
efficient. Its location within city limits and
the existing equipment didn't allow much
room for flexibility. We'd long been considering
the possibility of building a completely
new plant to give us more flexibility in terms
of infrastructure and to bring the technology
up to the latest state of the art,” says
Mårten Haukjem. In early 2017, TINE took
the plunge and started looking for a partner
to make the new dairy a reality.
Author: Hermann Meyer, Milkron GmbH, phone +49 511 89813-150
TINE's new dairy plant in Bergen supplies the entire region with fresh milk, cream,
and fruit juices.
22 · November/December 2020 ¦ international-dairy.com
/international-dairy.com
