When it comes to butter, as well as butter blend and margarine products, SPX is the company many manufacturers around the world look to for solutions to their processing needs — from simple mixers to blend ingredients to ingenious technologies that support the development of new products.
SPX in Action
A number of SPX companies and brands have become familiar names in the butter and margarine production industries.
SPX pioneered continuous, controlled shortening and margarine production more than 65 years ago with its Waukesha® Cherry-Burrell® (WCB) Votator® heat exchanger technology. Today, WCB components are commonly found in butter and margarine plants throughout North America, as are the TopWing™ series of pumps from Johnson Pump®.
Bran+Luebbe®, another SPX company, has also garnered recognition in the butter and margarine industries. An article in the April 20, 2007 edition of Creamer Media’s Engineering News notes that “most margarine plants in South Africa operate with equipment from Bran+Luebbe”.
One of those plants belongs to one of South Africa's leading producers of margarine. The company called on the expertise of Bran+Luebbe to supply new process pumps when the company upgraded its Capetown facility.
APV Solutions
Halfway around the world, a Canadian dairy cooperative employed the expertise of yet another SPX company. The dairy cooperative invested in a state-of-the-art butter-canola oil blending processor from APV® to help it produce two new spreadable butter products.
APV also supplied a new butter plant for Valio, the largest milk processor in Finland. (See the press release announcing the project.) The plant includes a new cream processing unit, a butter-making machine, three new butter silos, a new blending plant and a high-capacity, fully automatic 25 kg bulk butter packaging line.
Beyond Equipment
In addition to continuous butter making machines, butter buffer tanks, in-line mixers and other equipment, APV offers a variety of technologies specific to creating butter and other dairy products. Among them is the APV Dairy Blend System, which eliminates vegetable oil residues in the buttermilk. Without vegetable oil residue, buttermilk can be better utilized — including for use in creating lower-fat products.
The process involves injecting the vegetable oil directly into the butter, keeping the cream and oil separate. An advanced computer program controls the product composition to ensure the right amount of oil is injected into the product.