Furphy Engineering has its ear to the ground and it’s heard the rumblings — dairy processors want bigger on-farm milk tanks to improve logistics and farmers are getting onboard.
With dairy clients in all states of Australia, the 150-year-old Shepparton manufacturer has taken this information and done something about it, creating a new line of stocked, on-farm milk tanks.
Made ahead of time and stored, the horizontal stainless steel tanks leave the shop and arrive on farm in a fraction of the usual time.
Furphy sales manager Darren Leeder said the two stock sizes of 33,000 litres and 40,500 litres were chosen because of the industry trend towards bigger volumes.
“We’ve been getting feedback from dairy processors that they want farmers to increase their milk storage capacity so pick-ups can be decreased,” Mr Leeder said.
“So we’ve chosen these two bigger sizes, but we also have a range available from 20,000 litres to 56,000 litres.”
Mr Leeder said the stock milk tanks would have “rapid” delivery times compared to the custom tanks currently available.
Furphy Engineering has been supplying dairy farms with custom milk tanks — or vats as some farmers know them — since the 1980s.
Alongside milk tanks, the fifth-generation family owned business designs and manufactures tanks, vessels and silos for other industries such as brewing, pharmaceutical, chemical and water.
The Victorian-made tanks are built with fully welded stainless steel cladding, a polyurethane insulation system, low speed agitators to maintain milk homogeneity, internal spray balls for cleaning, calibrated volume sight tube and a manway door in the end of the tank for safer access when needed.
Higher tech features include a laser-welded dimple plate for maintaining milk temperature with rear connection points for the farmer’s chilling system and an option for electronic level indication in lieu of the traditional volume sight tube.
The stock milk tanks were launched last month, and are available to interested buyers.