Dairy Machinery Design: Observations from SIC 2026

SIC 2026, held in Caserta, represents one of the main meeting points for companies involved in the design of dairy processing machinery and in the development of systems for milk and dairy product processing.

Our participation in the exhibition was a valuable opportunity to engage directly with companies in the sector on operational challenges and design decisions. Beyond the exhibition aspect, what made the visit particularly meaningful was the quality of the discussions: technical exchanges, observations on recurring issues, and conversations about solutions applied in often non-ideal conditions.

It is precisely through this type of exchange that useful insights emerge, as design is brought back to its real application context, where product behavior and process constraints interact directly, often making the work of the designer more complex.

The raw material in the process

One of the most recurring aspects that emerged during the exhibition concerns the role of the raw material. In the dairy sector, the product cannot be considered a stable element on which to build the machine and, more broadly, the process, but rather a variable that directly influences every design choice.

Unlike other industrial fields, this sector deals with deformable materials, sensitive to environmental conditions and subject to changes over time, capable of exhibiting both elastic and plastic behavior. Temperature, humidity, and processing stage influence the product at every phase, making it difficult to apply standard design logic without adapting it to the specific context.

Under these conditions, many issues do not arise from mechanical errors, but from an incomplete interpretation of this variability and its inherent unpredictability, which cannot be fully anticipated upstream. When product behavior is simplified or treated as constant, the system tends to function only within a limited operating window, showing instability as soon as conditions deviate from the ideal.

The handling challenge

This dynamic becomes particularly evident when addressing the topic of handling and manipulation, which was one of the most discussed areas during SIC.

During the exhibition, a discussion emerged that closely aligns with a challenge we are currently addressing, related to the management of highly delicate products. The case concerns the handling of freshly formed burrata, still warm, which in a standard production line is stabilized directly inside the final container.

In that configuration, the product undergoes only one handling phase and settles naturally, minimizing stress. In our case, however, the process introduces an intermediate step: the burrata must first be stabilized and then transferred into the final retail containers.

This additional step, although seemingly simple, significantly increases the complexity of the system.

The issue does not lie so much in the handling itself. Even relatively simple solutions can be effective in performing the transfer. The real challenge emerges when the goal is to preserve the integrity of the product throughout the entire process.

At this stage, the burrata does not yet have a stable structure. Its temperature and consistency make it extremely sensitive to any contact, and every interaction with the machine becomes a potential critical point. As a result, the system cannot be designed focusing only on the movement, but must be built around the behavior of the product in that specific phase of the process.

When this aspect is not considered as a central element, even technically correct solutions can lead to defects that are difficult to control.

Dairy Machinery Design: Implications for design

The discussions that emerged during SIC 2026 highlight a recurring point. In many cases, the challenge is not to find a more complex solution, but to avoid oversimplifying the context in which that solution must operate. When the design of dairy processing machinery is driven only by mechanical logic, without real integration with the process and the raw material, the result is a system that works under controlled conditions but loses reliability in real production environments.

From our perspective, these days represented an important moment of validation and expansion of our approach. Some of the issues discussed confirmed the direction we are currently pursuing in active projects, particularly the need to develop solutions that take into account the real behavior of the product, not just its geometry.

At the same time, the exchange with companies that have longer experience in the sector opened up new possibilities. Alternative ways of addressing similar problems emerged, not replacing what we are developing, but expanding the range of approaches to be evaluated.

This is the real value of contexts like SIC: not to find immediate answers, but to collect elements that improve the way solutions are conceived. We will build on these exchanges to continue developing more aware design approaches, transferring to our clients solutions and ideas that also originate from these days of meetings and discussions.