Springfield, Missouri based Paul Mueller Company is helping the African country of Uganda supply fresh milk to its citizens. Through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, grants were issued to purchase Mueller's stainless steel milk tanks, cooling equipment, generators and heat recovery systems to set up milk collection centers in 140 villages throughout Uganda. 80 of these collection centers have been installed so far, the contract for 60 more installs will take place in 2016. In the past Ugandan farmers have only been able to collect as much milk as they could consume or trade, within a couple of days. Now they can take their raw milk to a collection center where they are paid by the weight. "What these Mueller collection centers do is give the farmers of Uganda more independence and more safety for their dairy production. Before if the milk was not used within a few days it would spoil. The citizens of Uganda also benefit because now they have access to fresh milk and cheeses in their diets, where there was no access before unless you were a dairy farmer or traded with a dairy farmer" says John Hawkins, General Manager of Paul Mueller Dairy Division USA
The President of Mueller's European Operations in The Netherlands, Wytze Tjepkema (pronounced "Vizza CHep-kema") along with his team headed by Jos Ten Horn worked with the Dutch and Ugandan governments to get funding for the construction and operation of the collection centers through the grants.
"Mueller is the premier milk tank manufacturer in the world. That's well known not just in the United States, but everywhere in the dairy industry" says Tjepkema. "So when this problem for Ugandan dairy farmers was presented to us, we knew just the solution"
12.1.2015