The Prestes and Queizuar dairies are leading two of the main projects on the revalorization of dairy waste presented at the 4th Forum on Productive Innovation in the Agricultural Sector. The results are a wide range of high added value products

The IV edition of the Productive Innovation Forum of the Agricultural Sector, organized last February by the Axencia Galega da Calidade Alimenaria (AGACAL), hosted the presentation of two initiatives for the revalorization of dairy by-products, aligned to the objectives of sustainable development surrounding the sector. The Prestes (Vilalba, Lugo) and Queizuar (Touro, A Coruña) dairies were the driving forces behind these two projects, some of the results of which have already been presented. So far, both parties have managed to give added value to whey and, consequently, to develop a new range of products, such as cream cheese or premium butter.

Prestes Cheese Factory

This family business located in Vilalba (Lugo) began in 1991 with the production of cheese pieces of what would later become the Designation of Origin San Simón de la Costa. Since its consolidation as a cheese factory in 2000, it has been evolving and diversifying its production until today, when it is committed to the valorization of whey and the development of new functional products.

The objectives of this Prestes innovation project are fourfold: to achieve internal capacity to process whey; to increase the shelf life of whey from 20 to 48 hours; to develop a new range of functional allergen-free products, from butter to cottage cheese and cream cheese; and to reduce water consumption and wastewater treatment plant discharges.

To achieve these goals, they established a work plan structured in four activities, starting with the process of optimization, improvement and scaling up to pilot scale of the whey treatment process to obtain a concentrate by nanofiltration. In this way, the whey is desalinated.

In the next phase, the resulting product is characterized to obtain information on its composition and thus examine its feasibility.With the intention of defining a shelf life according to the needs of the valorized products, at this point “lysozyme was suppressed by nisin-producing cultures, which are natural lactic acid bacteria, specifically secreted by the bacterium Lactococcus Lactis Subs. Lactis, with the intention of acting as a biopreservative,” Prestes explains.

Once observed the evolution of the shelf life of the resulting nanofiltered whey, the next activity of the work plan of this project is the development of new functional products. With the support of external technological agents, Queixería Prestes was able to develop new allergen-free products, with a specific shelf life and physicochemical characterization.

Thus, the products developed so far are whey cream butters with flavorings, flavored cottage cheese, fetiñas from nano-filtered cottage cheese or cream cheese that will undergo a consumer acceptance test.

Finally, Prestes’ work cycle with this project ends with the approach of reusing the wastewater derived from whey. For this purpose, a nanofiltration permeate will be carried out to determine and characterize the water, then “the quality of the initial water is monitored and a membrane ro (reverse osmosis) equipment is used, ending with an analysis of the recovered water”, they conclude from the cheese factory in Lugo.

Queizuar

It is the driving force behind the project ‘Valnasom: valorization of whey cream through the production of premium butter’. Its main activity is the production of cheeses under the Designation of Origin Arzúa-Ulloa and Tetilla cheese. It is based in Touro, in the province of A Coruña, and the motivation to carry out this initiative is part of its mission: to achieve a factory based 100% on the circular economy, from the use of raw materials and by-products to obtain results with high added value.

It currently has a production of 2.4 million kilograms of cheese per year. “From every 10 liters of milk, we get 1kg of cheese and 9 liters of whey. Thus, from 1999 to 2023, we will go from about 30,000 liters of whey per day to almost 100,000 liters,” the cheese factory says, justifying Valnasom’s desire to optimize these thousands of liters.

“From the whey resulting from cheese production, a skimmed whey can be extracted, which preserves protein and lactose levels, and cream, from which we could obtain butter. Today there are large processing companies that use these by-products and we want to do so in our production system,” Queizuar points out.

This extracted cream contains between 38% and 40% fat, and is subjected to a process that includes: pasteurization, cooling, ripening/fermentation, churning, washing (with water and salt) and kneading, until it finally gives rise to butter.

With the objectives achieved in the ‘Valnasom’ research, Queizuar managed to “optimize all the variables involved in the whey butter manufacturing process; study how the process variables affect the final characteristics of cream and whey butter; to study how the use of milks with different fat profiles affects the process of manufacturing whey cream and butter, as well as the final characteristics of the product; to achieve the production of quality cream and butter; to know the technological aptitudes of whey cream and butter”, according to the cheese factory.

The most outstanding end result “is a summer/winter recipe of a butter with a minimum of 80% fat and a maximum of 16% water, with low oxidation and with a good texture and smoothness. In addition, it has a high content of unsaturated fatty acids, with a high capacity to withstand temperatures and good culinary aptitudes for melting or binding sauces and doughs; in short, a product of differentiated quality”, they explain.

Original news: El suero: De resíduo a producto de valor para las queserías gallegas – Innova- Campo Galego ( 27/03/2024).

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