Alliance Rendering Plant

In 2014 the Alliance Group commissioned a $25 million continuous throughput rendering plant in Southland to process sheep and cattle rendering products from Lorneville, Makarewa and Mataura. The new plant operates a lower energy rendering process which means considerable energy savings. The plant produces high quality meat meal sought by pet food manufacturers and for animal feeds, as well as tallow for use in a range of applications from cosmetics to biofuels.

The Lorneville plant replaced the more labour intensive, less energy efficient batch rendering plants at Lorneville (lambs and sheep plant), nearby Makarewa (vension plant) and Mataura (cattle plant). Consolidating the cooperative’s southern rendering operations at Lorneville aims to improve productivity, reduce costs and increase energy efficiency.

Continuous processing means that labour requirements are now only two persons per shift, giving a reduction of 35 people employed in the three previous plants. Where possible, these workers were offered employment elsewhere with the Alliance Group.

The new plant was built in three stages within a building covering an area of roughly one-third of a football field. Stage one was the ovine process, stage two the bovine process and stage three the truck reception area.

Lorneville’s renderable materials come by pipeline from its eight chains and those from Makarewa and Mataura come by truck and are channelled into the rendering plant.

Highly automated, rendering at Lorneville is now controlled via a centralised HMI-PLC, (a Human Machine Interface-Programmable Logic Controller), allowing for efficient operation and monitoring of essential production devices. Sensors around the plant measure four key parameters – feed rate, temperature, levels and amps which keeps the process operating optimally, or at steady-state. That state is monitored by staff at the HMI, where adjustments can be made remotely.

The new plant was designed and installed by Rendertech as a three-stage, two-and-a-half year process. The ovine line (sheepmeats) is designed for 12 tonnes an hour because Lorneville, the biggest sheepmeats plant in NZ, can process more than 25,000 sheep and lambs a day at peak periods. The bovine line does 10 tonnes an hour because Mataura’s peak throughput is more than 1100 cattle a day. The rendering plant needs to cope with 250 to 300 tonnes of ovine and 150 to 180 tonnes of bovine material in 24 hours. It will operate 24 hours, six days a week at full capacity and process more than 60,000 tonnes of raw materials annually.

The plant uses a low temperature press dewatering system (PDS) which works at considerably lower temperatures than traditional high temperature rendering – 85ºC to 95ºC compared with 130ºC to 140ºC, and over less time. Advantages include higher quality end products, less processing odours and lower fuel and energy consumption.

The new plant will make huge gains in energy, labour costs and its environmental footprint, alongside product quality and yield improvements, when compared with the three preceding plants it replaces. The business case predicted savings of 9,000 tonnes of lignite and 1.5 million kilowatt hours of electricity (equivalent to the needs of 170 households) a year. That will be exceeded said Aiann Cairns, the company’s energy management co-ordinator. The very efficient plant captures all potential losses, including spillages on the floor. Heat not used in the rendering is captured by a condenser and heats potable water to be used on the slaughter boards.

Rendering coagulates protein and ruptures fat cells under heat and then mechanically separates three phases – a water phase, a fat phase and a wet-solid phase. The PDS dewaters the wet-solid phase and the remaining material is dried into meat and bone meal for pet and livestock feeds. A reheating process separates liquid fats from water. Fat (tallow) is pumped to storage and the remaining water is evaporated using waste process heat.

All the rendering takes places inside and continuously, leading to greater environmental controls. Air from processing vessels is collected and pre-treated, then put through a bio-filter to remove all odorous compounds. The waste water treatment facility uses secondary (waste) heat to recover any fat and protein remaining in the water phase. Effectively, everything that goes into the plant is captured as fat, meat meal or clean water.

A major advantage of the new plant is the separation of end products according to livestock species. Ovine meat meal gets a good price premium in the pet food market whereas bovine meal is mostly in the lower premium stock food market. Species specific tallow doesn’t attract a sufficient premium to warrant separation, so it is combined prior to storage and sale.   Should the market change, the plant’s design provides the option of storing (and selling) it separately.

These are the main products and main markets:

• Dried blood meals- Mainly Asia , some NZ domestic, animal food ingredients for pork raising or chicken/egg production;
• Tallow- Three main uses (soap manufactured; oleo chemicals; bio fuels mainly NESTE Singapore).
• Meals – Mixed meals predominantly beef for chicken and pork food. Main markets Indonesia, China, Thailand Philippines. Also developing as a fish food ingredient for aquaculture.
• Ovine meals – lamb based for USA and EU, dry pet food mix, often lamb and rice kibble. Pet food companies have been keen to market these lamb-based meals as hypoallergenic foods as apparently many pets are developing allergies to beef-based diets.