There were other important developments in the 1980s, deriving essentially from an initiative of the Australian Dairy Corporation in securing a Public Interest Grant from the Commonwealth Government for a Cheese Industry Productivity Improvement Project (CIPIP). One result was P. M. Linklater's factory monitoring system already referred to. Another was the re-activation and successful commercial demonstration of a shorter method of cheesemaking first put forward by CSIRO in the early sixties. A third has been the use of membrane technology to increase the solids of milk virtually to cheese solids concentration before making Cheddar cheese. This process reduces the volume of whey almost to zero and retains in the cheese proteins normally lost in the whey. It calls for continuous coagulation of the milk and continuous handling of the curd, problems of cheese technology and engineering which have been ingeniously overcome by CSIRO in collaboration with APV-Bell Bryant. Others had recovered whey proteins for soft cheese, but this Australian technology led the world in retaining these proteins for hard cheese.[194]

Finally, though not part of the CIPIP, CSIRO combined with a commercial partner to prepare by membrane technology a raw material for processing. This 'cheese base' moves directly from milk to processed cheese without the time or cost of first making either curd or cheese.

Processed Cheese

Cheese processing in Australia has been dominated by Kraft from the time it was introduced in 1926. It was a batch process and was largely empirical, in that the scientific background of emulsion formation was little understood. In the 1940s a Kraft chemist, M. J. Ridge, made some fundamental contributions to the understanding of cheese emulsification but the work had to be put aside before it reached a publishable stage. Later an attempt was made at the Dairy Research Centre, Richmond, N.S.W., to describe the factors governing processing,[195] but the major advance had been made in the 1960s, when Kraft engineers developed a method for the continuous processing of cheese. Sliced processed cheese, made by solidifying a ribbon of cheese on a chilled roll and slitting and cutting, was first made by Kraft in 1959 with technology brought from America and in the seventies single slices individually wrapped in flexible plastic wrapper were introduced. Others followed this Kraft lead with similar or improved technology.

Tin foil supported by a cardboard carton has been the preferred retail pack for processed cheese but after the Second World War it became prohibitively expensive. The obvious alternative was aluminium but it corroded quickly and suitable protective coatings were long in coming. In 1951-2 Kraft installed American technology for the packaging of processed cheese in flexible film but it was never used because the problems of using aluminium foil for cheese were at last overcome by the development overseas of satisfactory lacquers. So metal foil has remained the preferred packaging material for processed cheese in cartons, while plastics (either in flexible films or rigid containers) have opened up other opportunities for the presentation of processed cheese products.

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering