- A place for education and professionalization
From ideation to design, the dairy processing workshop is a project led by UniLaSalle's farm management, in conjunction with the student-engineers who are members of the Agro Team association. It's a concrete, professionalizing experience in their academic careers. The workshop is also a new learning environment for engineering students. - Following the planting of 5,000 vines last June, the dairy processing workshop on the Ferme du Bois, close to the FoodLab to be inaugurated in December 2023, brings a new activity to the UniLaSalle farm.
- Financial support for local agriculture
The European Union, via the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), the Hauts-de-France Region, through the Pass Agri Filière scheme, and the Oise département have joined UniLaSalle in self-financing an investment of nearly €450,000.
Farm diversification for educational purposes
Like the recent planting of vines on a plot of land at Ferme du Bois, the creation of the dairy processing workshop has an educational vocation.
The laboratory has been designed in a 100m² space. Its equipment was chosen to complement that already available in the recently opened FoodLab, as well as in the campus's practical work rooms. The space is equipped with a continuous pasteurizer with high-pressure homogenizer, a churn, a skimmer, two 300 and 600 L vats, a mozzarella machine and a filling machine. A cold room, a 42-45°C fast-cooling parboiling chamber and a storage area complete the production space. The premises will be able to accommodate practical work by engineering students specializing in food & health and agri-food, and provide support for new student projects. The workshop will continue to transform knowledge on campus!
A logical continuation, a Unique brand
Since its creation (170 years ago), UniLaSalle has always had a polyculture-breeding application farm, affirming its attachment to animal production. The herd in place not only enables research work to be carried out, but also serves as an application for student training or transfer to local farms. For example, some fifteen years ago, the school acquired the region's first milking robot. Work has also been carried out on methanization. Today, innovation continues with the opening of the workshop adjoining the cowshed. This project, which had been in gestation for a number of years, was accelerated by the arrival of students from AGROTEAM , an association of students with a passion for agriculture, who participate in the co-piloting of the farm. Their objective: to process milk from the Ferme du Bois and sell it directly on site. The Unique brand name was also born from the student-engineers' reflections. The absence of any connotations with the nature of the products is explained by the desire to sell other categories of food from the farm under the same name in the future.
Yoghurts (plain and flavored), cottage cheese, mozzarella and fromage frais are the first products to be produced. Of the 750,000 liters of milk collected, the aim is to process 50,000 liters for on-site sale from the 100 crates installed next to the workshop. And why not, in the future, for mass catering on campus or in Beauvais schools?
With the opening of the dairy processing workshop, the UniLaSalle group is confirming its ambition for the school's farm and its desire to make it a showcase farm for tomorrow's agriculture, entrepreneurial and in touch with its ecosystem.
This project is also in line with UniLaSalle's broader strategy of strengthening animal production, in conjunction with the veterinary school, for which the application farm will serve as a support.
