Technical officer - dairy goat milk manufacturing plant

Riki Te Wharau left university to join the Dairy Goat Cooperative and is hoping to grow with the company. Picture / Amos Chapple

Name: Riki Te Wharau
Age: 22
Job title: Technical officer - dairy goat milk manufacturing plant
Working hours: Vary. 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday or 12 hour shifts on four-day on, four-day off roster
Employer: Dairy Goat Co-op, other dairy (cow) companies, companies using process engineering such as wine industry
Pay: $33,000 to $48,000
Qualifications needed: work experience or science degree
Career prospects: management, manufacturing, retail, corporate 

What do you do?

I do product quality and optimisation. We try to get as much of the product within specification as possible and cut down on out of spec product.

The first thing when I come in the morning is to check regulatory matters or see that we've met our legal requirements, say metal detection has been done or that the pasteurisation process has run. It's a verification process. The [plant] operator does the checks and we have to see that it is done.

I do yields, which is a summary of kilograms in and kilograms out. I'm looking at plant efficiency and optimisation trying, for instance, to optimise protein production and make sure we're not wasting protein.

I look over the formulation - our recipe - to check the ratios in the formulation are right. Sodium might be up in one batch, for example, and you pull it down. Some days I calibrate critical instruments such as the Milkoscan, which measures the composition of raw milk.

There are a lot of different, small fields to work in. I like that. I'd get sick of doing, say, quality control all the time. Some days I help the research and development people. I also do the rosters and production plan. You try to work it around the people and their families. For example, before Christmas we made some difficult products. But during Christmas we went for straightforward manufacturing because people want to have time with their families.

Why is the job important?

They need someone to do all the things nobody wants to do. Probably all my jobs could be done by other people in their jobs but they don't want to do them and I like the variety. And the best thing is the experience I know I'm going to get out of doing it. I can try a lot of things and specialise later. It's a big satisfaction to know you've saved the company some money.
Why did you choose this job?

I was a student doing a Bachelor of Science degree and had worked a summer job at the Waitoa dairy factory.

Brent, my manager now who I'd worked with at Waitoa, called me up and asked if I wanted a job. I'd lost interest in university. I only got two papers out of the six I was studying that year and felt I was losing focus and wanted a break from university. I talked it over with mum and decided to take the job and go back later and finish the degree.

I've been here since March and now I'm going to do the uni papers and finish the degree while I work. They've encouraged me to do that here.

What notable things have occurred in the job?

It's a small company and when we have staff meetings there's not much that is going on that we don't hear about.

I've been surprised how open the company is. It's nice knowing where your piece of the puzzle fits in and how the dominos fall.

One of the cool things I do is capex [capital expenditure] projects. One was organising the installation of a new hoist from costing to organising the fitters and the sparky. It feels authoritative and brings out the best in you.

Where do you want to be in five years?

I've been told there's a lot of potential for me in the company and being a young company new jobs can appear [within it] out of nowhere.

What makes a good technician?

Anybody could do this job so long as they have the right attitude. Having a good outlook is a good start. Having an open-minded approach to problems and being optimistic you can do it.

How could someone get a job like yours?

Look for job adverts or talk to people in the industry. Search out companies that do similar things.