Tetra Pak, Heler Foods partner to construct US$33.2M cheese plant

UK – Tetra Pak has announced a new collaboration with British cheesemaker Heler Foods to build a cheese-making plant using its technology platform, Tetra Pak Factory OS, which employs AI.

Modern food and beverage manufacturers face significant cost pressures, demanding higher resource efficiency and reduced waste.

In large-scale cheddar production, maintaining product consistency and maximizing cheese yield requires precise control over variables like temperature, pH, and processing time.

The family-owned, third-generation business will install a new cheese-making plant featuring two high-speed pasteurisers, eight state-of-the-art cheese vats, and a new cheddar belt system.

The system at Heler Foods will provide continuous monitoring of production data and performance. This real-time monitoring will allow processing equipment to autonomously adjust, optimising cheese yield, improving product consistency and enhancing operational efficiency.

The investment follows a significant period of expansion across the wider Heler Foods group, including major recent investment into Heler Foods Packing, the group’s specialist cheese packing facility in North Wales.

George Heler, CEO of Heler Foods, said, “This investment underlines our long term commitment to British cheese making. As a family business now in its third generation, we have always believed in reinvesting back into the future of the company and continuing to push forwards. This latest investment is another major step in that journey.

“As consumer expectations continue to evolve, precision in cheese making becomes increasingly important, particularly within healthier and functional cheese products. With the strong growth we are experiencing with flagship high protein brand Eatlean Protein, having world class process control and consistency is more important than ever.”

Developed in collaboration with Accenture, Tetra Pak Factory OS is supported by partners including Siemens, Rockwell Automation and Inductive Automation.

The automated adjustment mechanisms are engineered to directly lower consumption metrics for critical inputs, resulting in reduced energy, water, and material waste per tonne of cheese produced.

By utilizing real-time process control, the system ensures precision in manufacturing, which is highly critical for specialized dairy lines such as functional and healthier high-protein cheese products.

The resulting operational stability provides measurable efficiency gains and long-term maintainability for the manufacturing plant.

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