The history of Latteria Sociale Valtellina with its more than 110 barns, located throughout the provinces of Sondrio, Lecco, and Como, from which over 1,900 hundredweights of fresh mountain milk are collected every day, is a history of 45 years, made up of men and women profoundly connected to the land, tireless and passionate workers who wake at dawn and stay in the barn until sunset.

Tradition and innovation are the driving forces behind the evolution of this leading cooperative in the Italian dairy sector. What allows the company to maintain control over these two naturally opposing forces, is its respect for the values ​​of fairness, humility, transparency, and authenticity, that define its business. All of this is aimed at meeting consumer needs and protecting the environment, prioritising animal welfare and respect for mountain cultures and territories through ongoing investments. Among these investments is the recent purchase of an SMI EBS 4 K ERGON rotary stretch-blow moulder, to produce 0.5 L and 1 L PET bottles for packaging milk and 0.48 L PET bottles for kefir.

Latteria Sociale Valtellina chooses PET for milk packaging

Choosing the right packaging can make a difference in preserving the ecosystem; for this reason, Latteria Sociale Valtellina is particularly attentive to this issue, having to sustainably manage over 1,200 hundredweights of milk collected daily from the farms of Valtellina, Valchiavenna, and Alto Lario by the cooperative members and bottled at the Postalesio facilities. To pack its mountain milk, the company took the first major step toward environmental sustainability by choosing PET bottles, a safe, durable, and shatterproof material that guarantees the quality of the product they contain. The company has also identified RPET50 (PET with 50% recycled material) as the best solution for producing bottles, especially in light of the new EU directives for the responsible management of plastics used in industrial processes.

SMI solutions for Latteria Sociale Valtellina

Latteria Sociale Valtellina firmly believes in the importance of working closely with its suppliers, establishing relationships based on loyalty and transparency, as the recent collaboration with SMI for the supply of an EBS 4K ERGON stretch-blow moulding system for their plant at Postalesio. This has enabled the company to bring the production process for 0.5L and 1L PET bottles used for bottling milk, and the 0.48L PET bottles used for kefir bottling, in-house. The primary goal of this investment was to drastically reduce the number of shipments required to procure the bottles, which were previously purchased externally.

Benefits for the environment and energy savings

In every aspect of its business operations, Latteria Sociale Valtellina is committed to improving the environmental sustainability of its consumer products and the industrial processes used to produce them. Among the most significant initiatives is the installation of the SMI EBS 4 K ERGON stretch-blow moulding system for the production of bottles in PET.

The insourcing of the PET bottle production process has allowed savings on weekly transport and optimised logistics. Currently, Latteria Sociale Valtellina purchases only preforms in PET, the semi-finished product needed for in-house bottle production, which, in volume terms, account for approximately one-twentieth of the finished container. The preforms are transported in reusable crates, totaling 497,952 pieces per trip, compared to 38,016 for blown bottles. This allows for a 92.4% reduction in trips required for the same number of pieces transported, with a clear positive environmental impact.

Benefits for management and control

The system supplied by SMI, uses an advanced automation system called MotorNet System®, which ensures the constant maintenance of optimal processing parameters throughout the entire production cycle, allows direct modification of machine settings from the operator panel, simplifies format changeover operations, and offers the option of temporarily disabling one or more moulds if necessary. The Posyc® operator interface is simple and intuitive, ensuring rapid parameter adjustments and facilitating routine and scheduled maintenance.

Benefits for operational efficiency

The preform heating section, integrated into a single module with the stretch-blow moulding section, is characterised by the horizontal development of the preform conveyor and an optimised ventilation and aeration system. The IR lamp groups responsible for heating the preforms are equipped with a system of heat-reflecting panels made of highly energy-efficient composite material, positioned both in front and behind the lamps, to ensure high heat reflection and more uniform distribution across the entire surface of the preform.