Pladot Mini Dairy

It's a mini dairy: new milk processing system lets you add value on the farm. (Pladot Mini Dairy Milk Processing System)

Author: Gene Johnston
Issue: Jan, 1999

Dairy farmers who want to add value to their milk on the farm take note: a system for processing milk into cheese, yogurt, butter and all other dairy products on farms as small as 30 cows is now being introduced to the U.S.
It's called the Pladot Mini Dairy Milk Processing System. It was developed on a kibbutz - collective farm - in the country of Israel in the 1980s. This farm (called Ein Harod Meuhad) developed the Mini Dairy as a way to process and utilize surplus milk on their own farm after the government instituted a milk quota system. While they couldn't sell their excess milk, they could consume it on the kibbutz of 500 people. But first they needed a system for processing the "above quota" milk from their 400 Holsteins.

The kibbutz already owned and operated a metalworking factory, called Pladot. That business built the first Mini Dairy System to process about 2,000 pounds of milk per day. When the project proved successful, other farms in the area asked if Pladot could make a Mini Dairy for them, too. "After we made the fifth one, we decided maybe we had a business," says Rafi Shamir, the marketing manager for the Mini Dairy.
Eventually, Pladot found a bigger international market. In the last 10 years, they've sold over 200 of the units into about 25 foreign countries. Most are in the developing world - Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America - where dairy farms tend to be smaller, the infrastructure not well developed, and consumers like buying direct from the farm.
Ready for the U.S. market.

Shamir thinks the Mini Dairy can find a home in the U.S., where farmers are looking for ways to add value on the farm. Last fall, his company was granted approval by the Food and Drug Administration to market in the U.S.
He has been here several times in recent months to study the market and develop a sales organization. "We're starting slowly and want to test our equipment in the New England area first. I'd like to sell 8 to 10 units in the U.S. in 1999," he says. (If you'd like to contact Shamir, see box below for a toll-free phone number.)

Shamir thinks that in the U.S. a Mini Dairy operator would not take on the large milk processors. Rather, he sees potential in reaching the smaller niche markets for dairy products that the big companies don't serve. For instance, the Mini Dairy might serve an emerging Hispanic market with preferred products, he says. "I tell people not to invest the first penny in this until they've researched their market."

The most important component of the Mini Dairy is a small continuous flow pasteurizer, which will pasteurize 50 gallons of milk per hour. Milk can go from there into jugs for fluid consumption, or through further processes to turn it into low-fat milk, cheeses, creams, yogurts, butter, or ice cream. To demonstrate the potential, Shamir lets visitors to the kibbutz sample such things as salty cheeses, chocolate pudding, and fruit-flavored frozen yogurts, all made with the Mini Dairy.
When you buy the Mini Dairy, you buy the equipment and training to make all of those products. You get several weeks of training on the farm in Israel. You even can buy the bacterial cultures to make each product.

Shamir says the smallest unit they make can process about 2,000 pounds of milk a day, or roughly the production of 30 to 40 cows. The cost of this unit is about $85,000. The largest unit will handle up to 10 times that amount of milk, from 300 to 400 cows, and costs about $450,000.