Fonterra Factory Visit

Fonterra Factory Visit

Hello! We are six volunteers in Inzpire 12.0 Project for AIESEC in Sri Lanka. In this project, we are visiting several companies and thanks to this opportunity, we had the chance to visit the famous dairy products factory "Fonterra". The company has two main production areas, one for the repackaging powder milk and another one related to the fresh milk they get from their local farms suppliers.

The milk powder is not actually manufactured in Sri Lanka, the only thing they do here is repacking the powder in different sizes. Basically the powder comes into some big packages from New Zealand, After loading the machine with the powder they fill it automatically into some small bags, then each one of these bags will be packed individually. All the previous process are done without any human intervention. To provide some jobs for the locals the process of loading the packages into boxes is made manually. The company produces around 800 packs in one shift and since the machines work for 24h they have 3 shifts which gives the total of 2100 packs for one production line (they have four production line). The boxes stay usually around three days before their distribution.

In our visit to Fonterra, we saw the process of how yogurt and dairy products are made in the production line. First, they get the milk from suppliers and add it into yogurts. The next step is called the incubation. They put the yogurt in the incubation room for 8 hours. In this process, the temperature is 42°C degree, which is the best temperature for the Lactic acid bacteria to be in an active state. After that, the yogurts are sent to the cooling room to make them into solid state. The temperature in the room is 6°C degree and they will be stored there for 30 hours. Then comes to the frozen store, where the temperature is below zero degree. The yogurts are stored for maximum 3 days. Finally, the yogurts are sent to the market by trucks. The above are the brief whole process of the production of yogurts.

In addition, to make sure the quality of yogurts, the company would supervise yogurts in the market once a month. Also, we witnessed that the staff in the factory should wash their hands before entering the plant with specific uniforms and face masks so as to ensure the clean environment of the working state. In short, the whole production process is professional and standardized.

The company is a co-operative owned by hundreds of milk suppliers in New Zealand and they have 9 affiliates around the world. In Sri Lanka milk powder is very popular and this company controls the main market share. Milk powder is easier to ship and also easier to store. It was amazing to see such an amazing facility and learn about the source of those products we consume every day.  It was great to see the high level of hygiene in the plants, this way we know that we can trust the products we use. It was again unfortunate that we could not take photos, because the machines were amazing, but completely understandable since every machine is unique and the know-how needs to be protected. We feel glad that we could visit another amazing factory this day and learned a lot again.