Closed, automatic cheese making – and why it pays
Most cheese is still made in open vats, cut by hand and moved by shovel. NDT has built closed, automatic lines for more than 20 years. This is what "closed" means in an NDT line – and what it does for yield, quality, hygiene and uptime.
Closed means the product never meets the room
In an NDT line the milk enters a closed vat and leaves it as cheese grains through closed pipes and enclosed conveyors. There is no open manway during production, no hand tools in the product and no exposure to the air of the room. Vats and conveyors breathe through sterile air units, and the whole line is cleaned in place without disassembly.
- No open vats, no open transfer – the product is enclosed from coagulation to the filler
- Sterile air units keep the air inside the equipment cleaner than the room around it
- Cleaning-in-place for the full line without taking anything apart
- Hygienic stainless steel design: no dead legs, no crevices, drainable surfaces
More cheese grains from every litre of milk
Yield in fresh cheese is decided at the cut and in the first minutes after it. Cut too hard, stir too early, overheat the curd or move it roughly, and the fines and the fat leave with the whey. NDT's vat is built around that: horizontal and vertical cutting tools cut the whole coagulum to the same grain, the filling height is kept low so the hydraulic pressure on the coagulum stays low, and the jacket heats on a controlled delta-T, so the curd is never scorched against the wall.
Whey is drawn off through the strainer while the vat is still agitating, which shortens the process and keeps the grain intact. At the end of the batch, lifting bellows raise the back end of the vat so the last cheese grains leave with the rest instead of going to CIP.
The result is measured, not promised. At a cooperative dairy in the USA, the same raw milk gives 10–15 % more cottage cheese than in the open vats it replaced (2025).
- Horizontal and vertical cutting tools for an exact, uniform cheese grain
- Low hydraulic pressure on the coagulum and a low filling height – less fat and fewer fines in the whey
- Whey drawn off during agitation – shorter process time
- Yield confirmed in commissioning, on your milk
The same cheese grain, batch after batch
A closed, recipe-controlled vat removes the variation that comes from people, weather and time of day. Temperature curves, cutting programme, stirring speed and drainage are set once in the recipe and repeated in every batch. The operating panel shows the batch in 3D and logs every step, so quality is documented as well as delivered.
- Uniform cheese grains and stable dry matter – the product your customers recognise
- Recipe control with full batch records for every vat
- Less rework, fewer rejected batches, longer shelf life
The line runs on recipe
NDT combines cheese-making knowledge with automation competence. Dosing, cutting, cooking, whey drainage, washing, cooling and creaming run automatically from milk in to cheese grains out. The system watches the process and reacts before a deviation becomes a problem. Operators supervise several vats from one panel instead of standing in one.
- From 16 to 8 hours per vat cycle at a cooperative dairy in the USA
- Manual stirring, shovelling and whey draining replaced by automated transfer and agitation
- Integration with the dairy's plant control, or stand-alone control supplied by NDT
Food safety by design, not by instruction
Open vats depend on people doing the right thing every time. A closed line depends on design. Hygienic stainless steel, sterile air, enclosed product paths and full CIP mean the microbiological risk is engineered out of the process. The product is protected from the room, and the room is protected from the product.
- Sealed, filtered process environment with automated dosing and cleaning-in-place
- No manual tools in the product – nothing to break and contaminate a batch
- Hygienic design to EHEDG principles; product-contact surfaces in AISI 316L; CE-marked, food-contact materials to EC 1935/2004
- Designed to 3-A Sanitary Standards for the North American market
Built for 24/7 production
A cheese line is a production asset, not a machine on trial. NDT equipment is built from proven components, designed for continuous operation and serviced on a plan. The Multi-Cheese Vat needs one planned service per year at 24/7 production. Our engineers in Denmark know every line we have delivered and support it by phone, remotely and on site.
- One planned service per year on the MCV at 24/7 production
- Insulated, detachable side panels and a large service lid for fast inspection
- Spare parts, upgrades and remote support from the people who built the line
One closed vat, every fresh cheese
Cottage cheese today, halloumi tomorrow, fresh cheese next year. The Multi-Cheese Vat is one solution for any type of cheese curd processing, from 50 % to 100 % of vat volume, in sizes from 6,000 to 30,000 L – and the paneer line adds the heat-and-acid flocculation process that a vat does not cover. Lines are modular and adapted to the building you already have, so capacity grows by adding machines, not by replacing them.
- Vats from 6,000 to 30,000 L in steps of 4,000 L
- Run efficiently at 50–100 % of vat volume
- Modular lines adapted to your existing building – lower capex, shorter time to production
What we put in the contract
A line proposal from NDT states what the line will deliver on your milk, your recipe and your running hours – and those figures go into the contract. They are confirmed in commissioning, batch by batch, before you take the line over.
- Yield – kilograms of cheese per 1,000 litres of milk, confirmed on your milk in commissioning
- Cheese grains – uniform grain size according to the recipe, batch after batch
- Cycle time – hours per batch from filling to emptying
- Capacity – litres of milk per day for the agreed running hours
- Service – one planned service stop per year at 24/7 production on the MCV; full CIP of the complete line
See what a closed line would do in your plant
Send us your reference product – the kind of cottage cheese you make – how much you make or how much milk you have, and the specification of your skim milk. We come back with a line proposal and the numbers behind it.
You can also read our FAQ on cottage cheese, paneer and halloumi lines.