France’s Laiterie de Saint-Denis-de-l’Hôtel (LSDH) has seleced GEA to build its new oats, rice, and soy processing plant.

The new plant is being built at the French liquid food and vegetable product manufacturer’s headquarters in Saint-Denis-de-l’Hôtel in the Centre-Val de Loire region.

It forms part of LSDH’s €300m investment programme to upgrade its production infrastructure.

Slated to start operations from mid-2022, the new plant will be equipped to produce oat, rice and soy base for beverages.

GEA said its process technology will help LSDH to further bolster its position in the market for plant-based beverages.

The new turnkey plant will feature integrated processing technologies, which include soaking, milling, separation through decanting, enzyme deactivation, starch hydrolysis, blending, homogenisation and pasteurisation.

The plant will have capacity to produce 14t of soy and cereal concentrate an hour.

GEA and LSDH have finalised the concept and contract framework for the plant following series of successful trials at the test centres in Ahaus and Oelde, Germany.

GEA liquid and filling technologies lead Heinz-Jürgen Kroner said: “At our test centres, we prove that we can bridge disciplinary divides and get our technology and process experts on the same page to integrate the best ideas into a customised concept. That was key to winning this project.”

The French Government earlier announced an investment programme for the regional cultivation of soy to reduce dependence on foreign import.

As part of this initiative, LSDH is working to establish the extraction facility for processing other cereal, nut and legume-based beverages.