Olam Food Ingredients Dairy Factory

Silvester Clark were engaged on this Olam Food Ingredients (OFI) project as part of a design and build team alongside GEA New Zealand and First Principles Constructors, delivering structural engineering for a dairy ingredients processing facility in Tokoroa.

The development centres around a 38m tall dryer tower (approximately equivalent to a 12-storey building), designed to house a large drying chamber assembly, main bag filter unit, and calandrias within the evaporator hall extending up to 23m and 27m levels. The structure utilises a combination of precast concrete columns, beams and wall panels, with suspended floors formed from precast flat slabs and in-situ reinforced concrete topping, supported on a shallow raft foundation.

The lateral load resisting system for the tower is based on a box-type structural form, where reinforced concrete floor diaphragms transfer loads to precast concrete wall panels. The structural design was further complicated by the atypical floor layouts and the presence of large openings within diaphragms required to accommodate process plant equipment.

In addition to the main dryer tower, the project includes a number of ancillary structures such as a dry-store, powder-bin packing building, amenities block, services building, silo pads, sprinkler valve house, tanker reception, transformer pads and pipe bridge, forming a fully integrated processing facility. Following completion of the initial dryer tower, Silvester Clark remain involved in the ongoing development, with a second dryer tower currently well underway.