Food Science Australia and Newport Scientific are to join forces to develop a 'miniature' processing plant for dairy products.
Food Science Australia is a joint venture of CSIRO and the Australian Food Industry Science Centre (AFISC).
An agreement signed on Friday 27 April is expected to lead to the development of an instrument that will help dairy food manufacturers reduce the costly problems caused by fluctuations in the consistency of milk supply.
Until now the Rapid Visco Analyser (RVA), has been used to analyse the properties of starch by the grains industry.
The agreement will see the use of the RVA extended to cover complex multi-ingredient dairy foods such as yoghurt, cream cheese and ice-cream.
"Product quality control is a particular challenge for the Australian Dairy industry because farming practices cause variation in milk composition over the season," says Dr Louise Bennett from Food Science Australia.
"These variations can adversely affect the properties and quality of consumer dairy products such as yoghurt, cream cheese and ice-cream," she continued.
The RVA can be programmed to replicate the processing conditions of dairy products such as yoghurt.
Each processing step can be controlled and the viscosity of the product measured throughout the processing cycle, allowing manufacturers to make corrections to the process or composition of the mixture.
"This allows companies systematically to investigate a real food system, with the added advantage that this investigation can now be done on a much more economical and convenient scale", says Dr Bennett.
"The RVA can make 10-20 gms of products and process multiple batches a day whereas larger-sized pilot processing plants can only produce one or two batches per day and may require thousands of litres per batch."
The size of the RVA will allow dairy product manfacturers to use the instrument within the factory to do regular checks on the properties of their product and make adjustments to the full-scale process if necessary.
The RVA also has the potential to be adapted for wider applications within the food and other industries.
Source: Food Science Australia