Juhayna Food Industries has reopened Alexandria University's educational dairy plant after funding its rehabilitation, bringing the facility back to a daily production capacity of 5 tonnes.
The plant was inaugurated on 29 October in the presence of Major General Eng. Sherif El Rashidy, Head of the Industrial Affairs Sector, representing the Minister of Industry, and Dr. Khaled Gad, Head of the Central Administration for Agricultural Extension and spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation. Seif El Din Thabet, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Juhayna, and Dr. Ahmed Adel Abdel Hakim, Acting President of Alexandria University, also spoke.
Juhayna's upgrade included:
New equipment: a hot-water boiler, an automatic yogurt filling machine and a final pasteurisation unit.
Repairs: the pasteurised milk pouch packaging machine, which runs at about 2,400 pouches an hour.
Systems: upgraded cooling, water and cleaning systems.
Output: pasteurised milk, yogurt (up to 200 cups an hour) and cheese on an industrial scale.
Students train across the full process, from milk reception and pasteurisation to packaging and refrigeration, making pasteurised milk, cheese, butter, ghee and ice cream. The halls take 20 to 30 students for pasteurisation and 10 to 15 each for cheese and ice cream. Users include several Alexandria University faculties, postgraduate researchers and students from Damanhour, Menoufia and Assiut universities.
The plant also supplies pasteurised milk and yogurt to Alexandria University hospitals, as it has since 1995, along with university dormitories, camps and several NGOs. It started in the 1960s as a dairy extension laboratory and was last re-equipped in 1992.
"At Juhayna, we believe that the future of Egypt's dairy industry depends on our ability to invest in human capital," Thabet said. Juhayna, founded in 1983, exports to 64 countries. The cost of the project was not disclosed.
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