Company aims to put extra life into 'fresh' milk exports

A Northland company wants to compete for the UHT market from a Kerikeri-based dairy factory.

New Zealand built up its dairy industry by exporting milk powder and processed dairy products such as butter and cheese. Now an enterprising local company plans to use UHT technology to give Asian consumers a taste of unrefrigerated "fresh" milk.

Northland Milk New Zealand Ltd (NMNZ) intends to process about 300,000 litres of Far North milk daily into UHT long-life milk and ice-cream products at its proposed dairy factory near Kerikeri for export, primarily to China.

UHT or ultra-high temperature processing sterilises food by heating it above 135C - the temperature required to kill spores in milk - for one to two seconds. UHT milk, if not opened, has a typical unrefrigerated shelf life of six to nine months. It is the most popular milk in much of Europe, where across the continent as a whole seven out of 10 Europeans drink it regularly.

Finished product from the Kerikeri UHT factory will be trucked to the port at Auckland in up to a dozen 12m refrigerated containers daily at season peak. NMNZ considered using the railhead at Moerewa, but the company's resource consent application to the Far North District Council to build the processing plant said tunnel sizes prevented Kiwirail from carrying refrigerated containers on the Northland rail leg and Marsden Pt had no container handling facilities.

However, this month, the Northern Advocate reported a $5 million German crane, the first of two proposed mobile units, was due to be loading ships at Marsden Pt by the end of the year .

NMNZ was formed in March last year with former Far North mayor Wayne Brown, of Mangonui, as chairman. Companies office records show there are two other directors - Neil Domigan, of Shelly Park, Manukau, and David Mace, of Arrowtown.

The milk would undergo UHT treatment in a 5800sq m building equipped with Tetra Pak processing equipment. The plant will have the capacity to process 14,000 litres of milk an hour and will operate for 21 hours daily.

The building would be set back 10m from Wiroa Rd on a 5ha site to be subdivided from Greg Flynn's 266ha dairy farm. He will receive treated washdown water from the UHT factory to irrigate his pasture.

There will be no public sales on the UHT site and total staff numbers will be 20, working in two teams of 12-hour shifts with a maximum of six staff on site during normal working hours and up to four on the evening shifts.

NMNZ proposes to obtain milk from farms within 20km of the dairy factory, with most deliveries during daylight hours and turning left on to the site from the western Okaihau direction. At 25,0000-litres per delivery, this is 12 truck arrivals daily using two units arriving six times a day, between 6am and 12pm.

The resource consent application says the site area is the minimum site that can meet the requirements of the recently changed FNDC rules for rural production and the Government's own rules for overseas investment. It is considered off-shore customers will seek to own some of the shares in NMNZ in order to preserve ongoing supply relationships.

FNDC require a maximum of 15 per cent site cover for buildings and sealed areas, although it has not justified the reason for this rule which leads to inefficient land use as the 85 per cent of uncovered residual land is simply a cost to the enterprise in lawn-mowing.

Conversely, Overseas Investment Office rules limit land size to 5ha for any off-shore joint ownership of rural land, hence limiting the factory and vehicle movement size.