First sweet whey powder from state-of-the-art Estonia dairy plant

Bladel, January 30, 2024 | After almost 3 years of planning, design, construction, installation and an extensive testing phase, the time has come: the very first sweet whey powder has been produced at the new dairy plant in Estonia. In April 2021, E-piim, Interfood Group and Royal A-ware joined forces to establish this state-of-the-art dairy plant. Interfood Group is responsible for selling the whey powder, butter and cream produced in this facility, and Royal A-ware for selling the cheese. This factory employs about 100 people.

Jaanus Murakas, E-piim Board Chairman: “The entire team deserves credit for achieving another major milestone. We are on our way to reach full capacity in our sustainable cheese and powder factory. Many thanks to the team, to our investors and our cooperation partners!”

Kristian Ruis, Corporate Development Manager at Interfood: “Experiencing the first production run of sweet whey powder is satisfying and means that another major milestone has been reached. After years of dedication and commitment, this journey is getting close to delivering the most efficient and flexible dairy factory in the Baltics. This project is a prime example of parties joining forces, bundling expertise, and creating a long-term ‘win-win’ together.“

Randel Veerits, Director of the dairy production facility: “Starting up of a fully automated cheese factory has been a great experience for all of us. The team is excited that we now have another important product available in our Paide factory through the valorization of cheese whey. This means we achieve higher efficiency of the factory as a whole.”

Mirte Doomen, R&D Manager at Interfood: “It has been a great journey to work closely together with E-piim to get the factory ready for launch and matching customer needs. Seeing with my own eyes how the first sweet whey powder was coming out of the spray drying tower was very exciting. Our commercial teams can't wait to go to market with this product.”

In the picture below: Team member from E-piim, Relco & Interfood Group