On the road with a mobile cheese factory

For four months, in a radius of about twenty kilometers buzz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), mobile cheese dairy products Mary Barbie Shawano and O’Reilly HollySARL Grulh’co Partners, collects whey from sheep breeders.

The trailer (4.50 x 2 m) was designed by local craftsmen and equipped Making cheese from whey (called “greuil” locally): 600 liter copper boiler installed at the bottom of the trailer, three 13 kg gas cylinders connected to a stove, two sinks, water storage, utensils, good ventilation, carbon dioxide detector₂All are designed according to sanitary standards.

For around €20,000 excluding tax, the cheesemakers have a standalone system, a long tube connected to a pump that allows the whey to be transferred from the farmer’s cheese-making pot to their boiler. They could have built a permanent workshop and Mary explains that she supplied a trailer with a refrigerated tank, but it was too expensive. Whey needs to be processed very quickly – or refrigerated – or it will acidify. There, we do the transfer on site and the customers are delivered the next day. The utensils are stored in the SARL warehouse, where the cooling cell and cooling container are located.

Persuading the breeders

Mary believes in her development. Difficult “:” It has real nutritional value and the demand appears to be energized. Hence my desire to produce it and no longer see all this neglected whey. The young woman, who has worked as a shepherd and cheesemaker for more than ten years (as an employee or service provider) hopes to modernize this traditional production.

To start, the two partners had Support six or seven shepherds and cheese makers who forgo whey and agree to take back the remaining milk. But the goal is to convince other sheep farmers, and then cattle, no doubt, to be able to compensate them minimally and above all to manage the recycling of the whey residue itself. For their business to be viable, the two partners would have to produce five tons of cheese per year.