The latest food and beverage industry news and trend analysis

FrieslandCampina has completed two capital investment projects at its cheese production site in Gerkesklooster, the Netherlands.

The dual upgrades focus on the construction of an advanced milk reception facility alongside the technical optimisation of the site's whey processing infrastructure. Engineered to streamline site logistics and cut resource consumption, the investments enable the facility to recover higher-value derivatives from raw milk while reducing operational energy and mains water usage.

The completion of the work marks a further phase in FrieslandCampina's wider manufacturing roadmap, which centres on maximising the commercial value extracted from milk streams and upgrading core European processing assets.

Streamlined Milk Reception and Water Recovery

The newly constructed milk reception installation has been re-engineered to establish shorter, more direct liquid product flows across the Gerkesklooster facility.

By reorganising internal fluid handling pathways, the site has improved operational efficiency while reducing both thermal energy requirements and overall water usage during intake.

Key technical and operational benefits delivered by the intake upgrade include:

Shorter Product Flow Lines: Streamlined intake pipework and routing reduce pumping energy requirements and shorten turnaround cycles.

Water Recycling Integration: The system increases the closed-loop recovery and reuse of process water, substantially decreasing the plant's reliance on municipal mains water supplies.

Maintenance Efficiencies: Upgraded components and modernised clean-in-place (CIP) infrastructure lower scheduled maintenance overheads across the reception area.

The intake modernisations allow the plant to handle high raw milk intake volumes with lower baseline utility expenditure.

Whey Processing Upgrades for Infant Nutrition

Running parallel to the reception overhaul, FrieslandCampina has completed an extensive upgrade of Gerkesklooster’s whey processing infrastructure.

The equipment modifications elevate processing standards, qualifying the site to produce high-grade whey ingredients suitable for paediatric nutrition applications. Under the updated operating framework, raw whey generated during cheese production will be pre-processed on-site before being transferred to FrieslandCampina’s specialised processing campus in Borculo for final refinement into high-purity infant formula ingredients.

Sibble Jan Broos, Plant Director at FrieslandCampina Gerkesklooster, stated that the completion of the two projects represents an important milestone in future-proofing the facility. Broos noted that the developments complement one another, with the milk reception facility delivering resource efficiency gains while the upgraded whey installation unlocks greater commercial value from the cooperative's milk intake.

Dairy Processing Streams

The investments at Gerkesklooster reflect broader operational strategies across the dairy processing industry, where manufacturers increasingly prioritise fractionating milk into specialised, higher-margin ingredients rather than relying solely on commodity dairy production.

By upgrading whey quality to infant-grade standards, FrieslandCampina strengthens internal supply resilience for its global nutrition business, integrating the Gerkesklooster cheese plant more closely with downstream processing operations at Borculo. Concurrently, reducing utility footprints aligns with the cooperative's targets to improve overall processing sustainability across its European manufacturing network.