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Raw Milk: Preserving Traditional Dairy with Modern Automation

Industry - Food and Beverage

The Raw Milk Company’s approach to scaling raw milk production with UniStream.

About the Company

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The Raw Milk Company is a family-owned business in the Netherlands producing unpasteurized dairy products such as handcrafted kefir and yogurt. Their methods avoid heat treatment, preserving proteins, fats, vitamins, and live cultures—core to the quality of their artisanal products.
To meet growing demand, they needed to scale production while keeping full control over sensitive processes like dosing, fermentation, and mixing. They chose Unitronics’ UniStream PLC + HMI to support this transition.

The Challenge

Preserving Farm-Fresh Quality while Scaling Production

Since 2015, founders André & Tonny Mulder (‘t Ecoloar dairy) and Jos & Dorthy Elderink (Het Hengelman plant) have prided themselves on delivering unpasteurized milk straight from grass-fed cows. By avoiding heat treatment, every batch retains its full spectrum of proteins, healthy fats, vitamins and live cultures—delighting customers with genuine farm-fresh flavor.

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As demand climbed, the Raw Milk Company needed a way to maintain that artisanal touch—starter-culture dosing, gentle mixing and precise fermentation—while adding capacity. UniStream PLCs made it possible.

Scale production of raw dairy products while maintaining:

  • Precise dosing of starter cultures
  • Gentle, controlled mixing
  • Accurate temperature regulation for fermentation
  • Overall process consistency and traceability

Manual methods were not sufficiently scalable. The team needed an automation platform that could replicate their existing process—without changing it.

 

UniStream: the Heart of the Artisanal Process

Chosen for its seamless blend of PLC logic, color touchscreen HMI and flexible communications, UniStream sits at the core of the new system. Its standout capabilities include:

  • Integrated PLC & HMI
    A single UniStream controller replaces any need for separate PLCs and panels. Its big, full-color touchscreen display guides operators through each handcrafted step—ensuring consistency without sacrificing control.
  • CANopen-Driven Valve and Pump Control
    UniStream’s built-in CANopen Master sequences valves and dosing pumps with perfect precision, keeping flow rates and ingredient ratios exact throughout the process.
  • Multi-Loop PID Regulation
    UniStream’s auto-tuned PID loops maintain optimal temperatures and mixing speeds, so each batch ripens and cultures just as the artisan intended.
  • Secure Remote HMI via VNC
    Managers can log in from anywhere—on the farm or halfway around the world—to monitor cycles, tweak parameters or troubleshoot instantly, slashing travel time and downtime.

Rapid Deployment and ROI

Working with A&S Techniek’s dairy-automation expertise, with help from Isotron in developing the Unitronics’ UniLogic™ application, the Raw Milk Company went from design to commissioning in a fraction of the usual timeline. UniLogic’s object-oriented environment allowed engineers to:

  1. Template and deploy recipe sequences for different products.
  2. Configure alarm thresholds that automatically notify staff of deviations.
  3. Enable real-time trending and data logging—feeding production metrics back to headquarters for continuous improvement.

The result? A demonstrable uplift in production and excellent product quality.

Artisanal Goodness, Powered by Unitronics

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Modernizing with Unitronics UniStream PLCs enables the Raw Milk Company to easily integrate advanced automation into its artisanal DNA. Today, they can scale confidently—delivering more of RAUWPOWER’s authentic, unpasteurized goodness—with UniStream precision control, visibility and agility.

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