Arla Foods

Customer: Arla Foods
Project: Effluent Waste Flow Monitoring
Location: Lockerbie, Scotland
Products: Open Channel Flow Meter

Arla Foods is a leading farmer-owned dairy cooperative, supplying milk, cheese, butter and other dairy products to retail, foodservice and food manufacturing markets. Its creameries depend on reliable process monitoring to support efficient production, consistent product quality and effective management of dairy effluent.

Arla was looking to monitor the effluent output from a creamery and consequently contacted Able via a Google advert and a subsequent web form submission. Our sales team was quick to recognise and act on the opportunity, visiting Arla’s major dairy and cheese-making complex in Lockerbie with a view to surveying the site for the optimum position to locate the open channel meter on the creamery effluent outflow.

Subsequently, Able recommended and formally proposed the combination of HACH’s non-contact open channel meter, the FLO-DAR Area Velocity Sensor with the FL1500 Stationary Flow Logger.

The FLO-DAR’s main advantage here is that it normally measures velocity and depth from above the effluent, reducing contact with wastewater and exposure to fats, grease and other material that can foul submerged instruments. However, as the unit includes the surcharge velocity option, it can also continue measuring when rising effluent submerges the sensor. This was an important contingency for Arla.

The HACH meter allows Arla to understand how much wastewater the site produces, manage its treatment or disposal, and provide records of discharge volumes.