Milking equipment cleaning system wins Prince Philip Award

A milking equipment cleaning programme claimed to bring savings of £1000 a year in energy has won Ecolab the RABDF Prince Philip Award, presented at Buckingham Palace.

The company was awarded for the most practical, relevant and best presented technical exhibit with the newly launched Lactivate-System at the Dairy Event and Livestock Show this year.

Ecolab’s Mark Williams says “After five years of R and D, it’s a great achievement to reach a point where the Lactivate-System is ready to market.”

The Lactivate-System is based on the activation of lactoperoxidase, an enzyme found naturally in milk. And since only 1% to 5% of milk is necessary for the system to work, the pre-rinse phase can be eliminated enabling one third of water used for cleaning the milking equipment to be saved, along with the energy to heat and run this pre-rinsing water

A Certificate of Merit was made to milking equipment supplier, Vaccar, of Coleford, Gloucestershire, which launched at the event, Clusterflush, an individual cluster sanitisation system designed to help eliminate cross-contamination and infection between cows and thereby stop mastitis spreading within the herd via milking equipment.

RABDF’s chief executive Nick Everington says: “As organiser of the Dairy Event and Livestock Show, we are focused on communicating to farmers the benefits of best practice and technology transfer which will help towards improving their herd’s overall efficiency and introduce cost benefits. We are pleased to reward those exhibitors who excel in technical innovation and presentation, and Ecolab’s Lactivate-System proved to be an excellent example.” He adds: “RABDF will once again be staging the award at the Dairy Event and Livestock Show 2009 on 16 and 17 September and we look forward to another set of high calibre entries.