A state-of-the-art milk processing facility in Lacombe County will be a first in Canada

It's scheduled to open next spring

Diary Innovation West, or D-I-W for short, will use technology that turns raw milk into concentrate. That process, which is done elsewhere in the world, has a number of benefits according to D-I-W's Henry Holtman, not only for farmers but also consumers.

"We use things like a bacterial removal module which means it actually takes some of the bacteria out of the milk so that the milk will actually last longer on the shelves."

The facility, being built in Aspelund Industrial Park, also comes with a couple of messages. One is green and the other is economic according to Holtman. 

"So we save transportation costs as farmers because we pay right to the door of our processors. And what that means is we take four trucks of raw milk and we actually shrink that down to one. So it's significant for transportation saving. And then there's an environmental story around that, too. We will take 4500 milk trucks off the road to deliver that milk to intended processors a year. So that's significant. And it's the link between that environmental sustainable story to the economic one that drives this forward."

Holtman says the new plant is expected to open next May. "It'll be very exciting".