From Kilkenny to the Creamery: a smarter way to handle cheese moulds
Fabrication for dairy and pharmaceutical industries
A new accumulation system is rolling out of our Kilkenny workshop this week, destined for a cheese line in the south-west. The project is a good snapshot of what stainless steel fabrication for Irish dairy and pharma really means in practice: hygienic design, tight tolerances, and the agility to react when a regulator—or a production manager—needs a change made yesterday.
Why dairies need accumulation
For the dairy industry, traditional roller conveyors do the job, but they force operators to push, lift or—worse—wait. Our client wanted a buffer that would:
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store hundreds of washed moulds in a compact footprint
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feed them back in FIFO order without human intervention
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survive daily caustic wash-downs and weekly deep CIP cycles
Our fabrication crew spent the past month building this system from the ground up and tweaking every bracket and sensor until the system achieved just that. The frames are laser-cut from 316L stainless and TIG-welded with full penetration, so no crevices remain where milk fats—or, in pharma settings, bioburden—could hide. Photo-eye sensors talk to a PLC that meters each mould back to the filler at the exact rate required, smoothing downstream throughput by up to 18 % in factory trials.
A shared playbook for dairy and pharma
Although this install is heading to a cheese room, the same hygienic design rules apply to vaccine-fill lines and nutraceutical mixers:
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Smooth, radius corners & welds ground to < 0.8 µm Ra
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Castellated or perforated deck plates for rapid drainage
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Modular skids so vessels, pumps and control panels can be swapped during validation without cutting pipe
The advantage of working with an Irish fabrication shop is agility. If an FSAI.ie inspector flags a valve, or the dairy shifts to a different mould size, our maintenance team can arrive on site on the same day. We can swap a part in hours, not weeks.
See it in motion
What’s next?
Stay tuned for footage of the line at full speed. If your dairy or pharma project needs stainless-steel fabrication that clears both GMP and Irish food production, get in touch.