Lori A. Neisner, Vice President, Ampco, Glendale, Wis. 

Dairy Foods: Discuss recent innovations from your company. These could be brand-new products or upgrades to existing products. Relate these innovations to dairy processing.
 

Neisner: Ampco’s most recent innovation has dairy processors and other food plants eager to try our new ZP3 pumps. These pumps are a great addition to all dairy processors currently using the most popular circumferential piston style positive displacement pumps due to ease of maintenance and cost savings. These pumps offer multiple advantages over the competition. Improvements include: front-loading seals, in-line cleanability without further modifications to the pump, and a stainless steel gear case. Additionally, U2/TRA20/ZP2 pumps can be sent to Ampco for reconditioning and upgraded to the ZP3 design. Turnaround time for a complete rebuild is two weeks.

Dairy Foods: Demand for cheese and for yogurt, especially Greek-style yogurt, has processors adding lines or building new plants. Help them choose the right products. What should they look for when considering pumps and valves for a cheese plant? For a yogurt plant?

Neisner: This 3A pump has also passed the stringent EHEDG test and offers dairy processors a custom free drain design and elimination of dead zones in the shaft bore to improve CIPability while maintaining pump efficiency.

Dairy Foods: Processors want to produce dairy foods with minimal waste. They want to get the most from milk, ice cream mix, cheese curd, etc. How can processors use pumps and valves to control costs?

Neisner: These pumps offer the plant cost savings, less CIP time and downtime, and ease of maintenance. All Ampco positive displacement pumps have a stainless steel gear case included in the standard price, saving even more time on re-painting gear cases.

Dairy Foods: Processors are looking at the CIP process to minimize their use of water, which is another expense. What are some best practices in using valves and pumps?

Neisner: The features included in the ZP3 pump offer a shorter CIP time and less aggressive CIP process.

Dairy Foods: After-market parts are showing up. Some might be less expensive, but they are not always a great deal in the long run. What should a processor know about after-market parts for pumps and valves?

Neisner: OEMs, like Ampco, offer distributors and end users better quality and customer service due to understanding and controlling the entire manufacturing process along with test data to support published performance curves. Ampco is a full manufacturer located in Milwaukee WI where we machine, assemble, test, and ship all of our pumps.