How to Start an Amasi Manufacturing Business

South Africa’s farming ecosystem is under pressure to grow its income. One of the reliable ways to do it is to add value to what the farm already produces.

Instead of selling raw milk, or in addition to that, farmers can turn it into a finished product with its own brand, margin and market. Amasi is the tangy cultured milk that has been a household staple for generations and serves as an accessible, income-generating product for farmers.

This article explains what Amasi is, how it is made, and what you need to think about before you commit to building a small dairy.

What is Amasi?

Amasi is a cultured (sour) dairy product, made by inoculating pasteurised milk with a specific bacterial culture. Within the dairy industry, Amasi belongs to the cultured dairy products group, alongside products such as yoghurt, kefir and cultured buttermilk.

Dairy processing is flexible, as milk can be fermented, concentrated, dried or frozen, which is why dairy is often described as one of the most versatile raw materials a processor can work with.

Know Your Product Categories

Amasi is classified by fat content, and what you may call your product depends on it. There are five classes of Amasi fat content:

• High-fat Amasi: more than 4,5% milk fat
• Full-fat Amasi: more than 3,3% up to 4,5%
• Medium-fat Amasi: more than 1,5% up to 3,3%
• Low-fat Amasi: more than 0,5% up to 1,5%
• Fat-free Amasi: 0,5% or less

Deciding which of these you will make is one of your first business decisions, because it determines whether you need separation and standardisation equipment.

Under the current regulations, cultured milk must have a pH below 4,6 and at least 10⁷ colony-forming units per gram of viable lactic acid-producing organisms. It may not be heat-treated after fermentation, so you cannot pasteurise Amasi to extend its shelf life without changing what you may call it.

The word “maas” may also be written “amasi” or “amazi” in the alternate class designation.

Step 1: Secure and Store Quality Raw Milk

Your Amasi can only be as good as your milk. Milk is highly perishable and can turn sour if left at room temperature, so cooling is non-negotiable. Milk leaves the cow at about 37°C and should be cooled to 4°C within three hours. While it is held in cold storage, it should be stirred gently to stop a cream layer from forming on top. Larger operations keep milk in vertical tanks fitted with propeller agitators until processing begins.

If you are a dairy farmer, you already control this step. If you plan to buy milk from other producers, build cooling and quality checks into your supplier arrangements from day one.

Step 2: Prepare the Milk

Before fermentation, the milk goes through several preparation steps.

Clarification: This removes solid impurities such as dirt particles, white blood cells and udder tissue cells. In a small dairy, filtering through a perforated strainer, fine-wire mesh, or woven cloth (a traditional melkdoek) is enough. Medium and large dairies use replaceable in-line filters ahead of the heat exchanger.

Pre-heating, separation and standardisation: If you are making a product with a defined fat content, the milk is pre-heated to between 45 and 60°C and passed through a centrifugal separator to split the cream from the skim milk. Pre-heating also inactivates lipase, the enzyme responsible for rancidity in fats. The two fractions are then recombined in the right proportions so each batch hits the guaranteed fat level, which matters because the fat content of raw milk varies.

One helpful shortcut: fat-free Amasi is made from skim milk and does not require standardisation.

Step 3: Pasteurise

Pasteurisation is a mild heat treatment that destroys vegetative pathogens and heat-sensitive enzymes. For Amasi, it has a second benefit: it denatures whey proteins, which then bind with other milk proteins. This improves water binding, helps prevent separation and increases the viscosity of the final product.

The method you choose depends on scale:

Batch pasteurisation suits small operations handling less than 2 500 litres of milk a day. Milk is pumped into an open or jacketed vat with an agitator, held for at least 30 minutes at 85,5°C, then cooled within 30 minutes to roughly between 43 and 45°C.

Continuous (HTST) pasteurisation suits large plants. Milk is heated quickly to 90 to 95°C for 15 to 40 seconds in a plate heat exchanger, which recovers up to 92% of the heat through regeneration, then cooled to 43 to 45°C.

For most start-ups, batch pasteurisation is the realistic entry point.

Step 4: Inoculate and Incubate

This is the stage where milk becomes Amasi. The warm milk, at about 22 to 26°C, is pumped into fermentation vats and inoculated with a 1 to 2% Lactococcus lactis starter culture, which is the bacterium used in producing products like cheese, buttermilk, and amasi. The mixture is then agitated so the culture is evenly dispersed. The culture produces lactic acid, flavour and aroma compounds that define Amasi.

The inoculated milk is incubated for 3 to 16 hours at 20 ot 30°C in insulated tanks that hold an even temperature. Fermentation is stopped when the preferred acidity is reached, and the product has coagulated to suit consumer preference. That flexibility in timing is also how you tune your product’s sourness.

Step 5: Cool, Flavour, Pack and Label

• Cooling: Cool the Amasi to 15°C as soon as the required acidity is reached to slow further acid development. Tanks with slow-speed scraping agitators speed up heat exchange.
• Flavouring (optional): Amasi can be flavoured with pasteurised fruit or permitted fruit flavours, gently mixed in. Every addition must be declared on the label.
• Packaging: Fill into laminated cartons or plastic bottles or tubs with foil caps, hermetically sealed. Filling happens at 15°C because the cooled product is thick. Packaged product then goes into cold storage to bring it below 5°C.
• Labelling: Containers are either pre-labelled or labelled after filling and sealing.

Know the Law

Several rules apply, and some have changed since the brochure was written.

• Product standards and labelling: dairy classification, packing and marking are governed by R1 510 of 22 November 2019, made under the Agricultural Product Standards Act (No 119 of 1990). Earlier sets of dairy regulations used different fat bands, so older guides will mislead you. Milk SA’s Dairy Standard Agency reported in 2025 that a review of R1510 is under way, so check for amendments before you print packaging.
• Container marking: particulars must be legible in at least English, with lower-case vowels at least 1 mm high. If you add fruit or another foodstuff to flavoured Amasi, the class designation must include its name and it must appear in the ingredients list.
• Premises hygiene: Regulation R638 of 22 June 2018 under the Foodstuffs, Cosmetics and Disinfectants Act requires food premises to hold a Certificate of Acceptability from the local municipality, issued after an environmental health inspection. A milking shed or milk production facility has its own certificate under separate regulations.

Energy and Funding Support

Heating, holding and cooling are the energy-hungry heart of a dairy, so your electricity plan is an essential part of your business plan.

• Prices: Eskom’s direct-supply tariffs rose 8,76% on 1 April 2026, and its bulk tariffs to municipalities rose 9,01% on 1 July 2026. A further 8.83% increase is planned for April 2027, with NERSA’s decision on the 2027/28 retail tariffs expected on 26 November 2026. If your site is supplied by a municipality, cost that tariff separately.
• Reliability: Eskom reports no load shedding since May 2025, though load reduction still affects a small share of customers, mainly in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. A cold room and a pasteuriser are still worth a backup-power line in your budget.
• Advice: the brochure invites farmers to call 08600 37566 or e-mail [email protected]. Eskom has since re-hosted the brochure on its energy advisory site, so confirm the current contact details there.
• Funding: the Eskom alternative-funding page the brochure links to dates from 2018, so check that it is still live. Current routes include the Agro-Energy Fund (Land Bank with the national agriculture department; grants and loans for alternative energy, with dairy and on-farm processing among the priorities), the dtic’s Agro-Processing Support Scheme (a cost-sharing grant, not repayable, where you fund the balance) and the IDC’s agro-processing unit, which funds processing capacity rather than primary farming. Schemes change names and terms often, so ensure that you confirm the criteria with the administering body.