Alpenhain is a company rich in tradition and is among Germany's leading makers of cheese. Alpenhain holds the leading market position for baked cheeses such as baked camembert, baked feta and baked mozzarella sticks. In order to anchor or expand this market leadership, investments were made in many areas, including an optimization of logistics as well as more efficient storage systems for the refrigeration of the products.

In order to implement these measures, Alpenhain commissioned IE Food Engineering, which is part of IE Engineering Group in Munich, Zurich and Geneva. The company specializes in making projects happen in the food industry. Under the direction of IE Food Engineering as the general contractor, a new high-bay warehouse with refrigerated and frozen sections, as well as a fully automatic fixed storage cell cooling tunnel was built.

Here, Voith Paper Air Systems made an important contribution by producing a fully automatic, discontinuous fixed storage cell cooling tunnel with traversing carriage for the cooling of cheese specialties for refrigerated display cases. The cooling tunnel has a capacity of 50 storage cells. The cool-down times determined for various reference products during the planning phase at the Voith pilot facilities have proven themselves in practice or were even surpassed. Currently, there are approximately 20 different kinds of cheese, with the most diverse of packaging sizes and designs, that are cooled in the cooling tunnel.

Jochen Völker, Head of Technical Project Management at Alpenhain, is fully convinced by the discontinuous system delivered by Voith: "It is exactly the right concept for our particular application." Thanks to the special air guide method, even critical packaged products can be refrigerated in the best way possible. The fully automatic traversing carriage guarantees the realization of product-specific storage periods in the cooling tunnel, thus providing the utmost in flexibility. Intelligent automation modules ensure that the cooling tunnel can be used in a way that optimizes energy use. A distinctive design feature of the tunnel is the way it has been constructed in an outdoor area. For subsequent production increases or products with longer cooling times, adequate spare capacity was taken into consideration to ensure that the cooling tunnel can be used in the best way possible in the long term to meet current market demands.

The pallet cooling system from Voith Paper Air Systems has proven itself in practical applications and is making an important contribution to quality assurance at Alpenhain.

Voith Paper is a division of the Voith Group and the leading partner to and pioneer in the paper industry. Through constant innovations, Voith Paper is optimizing the paper manufacturing process, focusing on developing resource-saving products to reduce the use of energy, water, and fibers.

Voith is setting the standard in the paper, energy, mobility, and service markets. Established on January 1, 1867, Voith currently has about 39,000 employees, € 5.1 billion in sales, and over 290 locations worldwide and is one of the largest family-owned businesses in Europe.

Voith is an official partner in the "Germany - Land of Ideas" initiative.