Rubtsovsky Dairy Factory Ltd (RMZ) is located in the city of Rubtsovsk in Altai region and has been a part of the Wimm-Bill-Dann production and trade group since 2001.
At that time the traditional cheeses of the domestic dairy industry were produced here: Kostromsky, Poshekhonsky and Radonezhsky in six kilogram heads. The plant also produced a small quantity of whole-milk products to serve the needs of the town of Rubtsovsk(milk, kefir, sour cream, etc).
Today the production capacity of the enterprise is 30 tons of cheese per day.
The factory produces the ‘Lamber’ hard cheese in two varieties: regular, with 50% fat, and ‘Lamber Creamy’, with 55% fat. A line for the production of cheese processes 95% of all the milk coming into the plant. Along with Lamber, the factory puts out a small quantity of whole-milk products to meet the needs of the city as well as dry whey.
Lamber is the single domestic cheese successfully competing on the Russian market with imported cheeses: the quality is of the same level while the price is more accessible for consumers. RMZ is the single enterprise where Lamber is produced.
The Rubtsovsky milk-processing factory was first put into operation in 1964. Subsequently, it went through two reconstructions, in the 1970s and the 1990s.
In 2003, reconstruction was undertaken which completely re-shaped the enterprise. The production area was furnished with the automated equipment of the German firm ALPMA and the Polish company Obram. Today, RMZ is one of the most modern cheese-making enterprises in the world. The German partners even concluded a special contract with the enterprise: students from Germany come to Rubtsovsk for training.
Cheese Iceberg in a Salt River
Before the 2003 reconstruction at the Rubtsovsky Dairy Factory, cheese-making vats of the open type were used and required more physical labor. The cheese was loaded, turned and loaded into a salt basin by hand. But now that the process is automated, a simple description of any part of the technological process sounds like an excerpt from a fairy tale or a fantasy novel.
“After passage through a climate-controlled tunnel, the heads of cheese are automatically extracted from block form and fall into a directed flow of brine. The heads of cheese float in a river of salt and flow into containers. The containers are automatically transferred into salt basins where the salting of the cheese occurs. (Throughout the process there is no physical contact between workers and the product and this ensures microbiologically ‘clean’ cheese). The salting process takes nine hours or longer, after which the cheese is again ‘washed’ by a flow of salt water out of the containers.
Before packaging the heads of cheese fall into a small basin with clean water, where excess salt is washed off the cheese, then they are dried in special tunnels.