Introduction: on behalf of folks in Cameroon-Micro-Factory

[SantaNjong]

Hello Everyone:
I recently return from home, where folks in my village requested that I help them find information and equipment for milk processing into: skimmed milk, yogurt, cheese and butter.
They have been trained by heifer project international in raising dairy cows. They produce milk which they sell to a processing factory. They have reached a point where they want to process the milk themselves into skimmed milk, yogurt, cheese and butter. They produce about 100l every morning, with possibilities of increasing milk production since there are other people waiting to get the 'gift of a cow' from those who already have the cows.
I have no experience in this kind of business. But, they seem to know what they want to do with their milk.
My question to you experienced folks: Are there any machines out there that could produce these lines of products? Used machines? Is there someone out there that I can talk to that will walk me through what they need? Is there someone out there who can help me with a sample business plan? I would also like to get a list of all that is required to get the business up and running.
Any help will be much appreciated.
Thanks

[Kern]

Caldwell has a nice book on small scale commercial cheese making (The Small Scale Cheese Business) that is available on Amazon.  It goes into all aspects from building the creamery, to equipping with machinery, etc.  A big issue in Cameroon is going to be cooling and refrigeration.  Caldwell may be a little light on this subject but there is plenty of information available on the Internet.  There are no machines that allow you to set the dial to what you want, load the the milk and get the product out the other end.  From your list of desired products the simplest solution is to make simple acid coagulated fresh cheeses.  These will fit in nicely with skimmed milk which creates the cream for butter, whole pasteurized milk for yogurt and fresh cheeses.  You need to come up with your product list and milk volume and then go from there.  Best of luck to you.

[Gregore]

I would say the most important thing we need to give advice is what are the products they think that the market is interested in and in what volume will it need to be in per day/week ?