This project involved fabricating a range of truck barrels and sub-frames, complete with pumping, sampling and metering equipment – from 11,000 litre tanks through to 14,000 litres. In one nine-month period NDA installed new piping, metering and pumping equipment to 450 trucks.
Today there are more than 400 NDA tanker trailers on New Zealand’s roads, forming the backbone of the country’s dairy fleet.
However, it was obvious that there was a market for a range of lightweight, robust, centre-draining low-profile tanker trailers – and NDA teamed up with Domett Trailers to produce the Drop Belly range of standard and low-profile trailers, which range between 18,000-23,000 litres. In 2013, when the new 50 max RUC regulations were introduced, NDA and Domett teamed up again to design and build a new 5-axle, low-profile 21,000-litre trailer for Fonterra.
From conception to production, the process took just three months.
These have now become Fonterra’s standard trailer, and the company is running more than 25 of these trailers throughout New Zealand.
At Fonterra’s Darfield site near Christchurch is the world’s largest milk dryer. It measures 18.3 metres in diameter and stands 28 metres in height – and it was fabricated by NDA Sheetmetal. The cone sections were fabricated in 18 sections measuring 7.5m x 4.8m, to a flatness tolerance of 5mm.
Thanks to NDA Sheetmetal’s large workshop, we were able to push the boundaries of what it’s usually possible to fabricate, in terms of dryer section sizes. In this case, we supplied chambers of up to 7 metres in diameter – in one piece. This dramatically reduced the amount of work required on-site, and allowed for a better finished product and top-quality install.
When the Dairy Goat Co-operative needed a new two-tonne per hour nutritional dryer, NDA Sheetmetal was able to fabricate the dryer chamber in one piece – and ship it to the site complete. Fabricating a fully-assembled and insulated dryer chamber in the workshop not only means less time spent on-site with assembly and installation, but a better end result because workshop conditions are so much easier to control.
This was to the great benefit of Fonterra, which due to an increased milk forecast urgently needed a reverse osmosis (RO) plant at its Longburn facility. Tetrapak New Zealand won the contract to install the RO plant, and gave NDA the contract to build four 250m3 silos for the milk concentrate.
Due to the urgency of this contract, timely delivery was key. NDA pulled out all the stops to make this happen, and completed all four silos within 12 weeks.