Mataura Valley Milk on track to deliver
Southland farmers are showing interest in becoming Mataura Valley Milk shareholders and the company expects to fill its milk supplier requirements, says manager Bernard May.
The company will manufacture infant milk formula mainly for export from its purpose-built nutrition plant at McNab, near Gore, Southland.
May said the continued recruitment of supplier shareholders and staff was among the major focus of management for the next six months.
The company had received strong interest from farmers to become shareholders and was confident of contracting the 25 to 30 suppliers needed by December, he said.
‘‘The farmer shareholders already on board are embracing the opportunity of superior returns by supplying milk into a fully integrated nutritional business.’’
The $240 million project is gearing up for production to begin in August next year, with 65 fulltime employees.
About 30,000 tonnes of infant formula will be manufactured each year at full capacity. The plant will process about 500,000 litres of whole milk a day while producing nutritional products.
A total of 80-85 per cent of the product produced by the plant will be exported.
Mataura Valley Milk is a partnership between New Zealand and overseas investors.
The site was announced to be going ahead in July last year, with China Animal Husbandry Group, a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned enterprise, injecting $200m into the project.
The company will have a 71.8 per cent stake in the site with 20 per cent held by Southland farm suppliers and the remainder by Hamilton-based milk powder company BODCO and Mataura directors.
The project had initially stalled after dairy prices fell in 2015, but the Chinese investment
Mataura Valley Milk milk supply manager Dave Yardley said farmers he had met so far were excited about the opportunity, and he had a busy schedule of meetings planned.
‘‘The small size of the business, the connection they will have as shareholders, and the fact we’re going to the higher end of the value-added market, are really peaking farmer interest.
‘‘Positivity has returned to the dairy sector so people are seeing it as a good time to review where they are and whether they have a better choice out there,’’ Yardley said.
May said the plant’s construction was on schedule with the drying tower already at its maximum 40 metre height.
The plant would exceed several international nutritional validation standards and contain features which set it apart from a traditional dairy plant, May said.
‘‘We’re absolutely confident that right here now, we’re building the world’s best nutritional formula plant,’’ he said.