Small business Q&A
New Zealand’s only cheese school, located at Putaruru in south Waikato, has been running for 10 years and has trained some of the best. Founder Sue Arthur tells Aimee Shaw about training the competition.
What does the business do? The New Zealand Cheese School was originally set up to train professionals and people who would like to be cheese makers. I set up at the end of 2007, the same time as my artisan cheese business, Over The Moon, and I did that because I couldn’t find any training here in New Zealand. We do the practical and theory courses at Over The Moon’s factory, with students helping to make our commercial production for the week, under supervision. The cheese courses are block courses; they’re short intensive courses for a week and people can either come in and do a practical course or a theory course. We’ve had several thousand students come through until now including professionals and those who want to make cheese at home for themselves. What was your motivation for starting the business? I had been to Australia and met Neil Willman who was a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne’s training site, south of Melbourne, and thought it was ridiculous that New Zealand had no cheese training facilities given that we have the best milk in the world, and so much of it, too. At the time, the only training you could get was if you were a Fonterra staff member down at Palmerston North. I was completely frustrated and I thought it would be nice to set something up while I was setting up my cheese factory. We’ve trained students from all over the world. Initially, the objective was just to lift the level of skill in the New Zealand industry and to widen the range of cheeses that we make here in New Zealand. Ten years ago you could have gone into any supermarket and find a very narrow range of products, and I wanted to increase the variety for the New Zealand consumer. But because of Neil’s relationship with some of our suppliers, we’ve trained people from Peru and he’s involved in a project in lifting the standards of cheese making in the Andes, with the New Zealand and Peruvian government. A couple of years before that we were involved with an aid project in Myanmar, where we had a group in and trained those people here as well. How important is it for the school to be involved in aid work? It’s not a requirement to make the business function well but Neil and I are towards the end of our working lives and it’s just amazing to be able to give something back to the industry and not just to New Zealand, but around the world, and to use our skills and experience to be able to do that. It’s a very rewarding job to be able to do and changing people’s lives is just amazing. What trends have you seen in the industry? There’s a real interest in the cottage industry. There’s a lot more people who now want to know what’s in their food, but in terms of our professional courses, there seems to be a real interest, in New Zealand and around the world, in starting up small artisan, handcrafted businesses, being able to supply something local. What are your long term plans? Our objective is to try and convert some of our courses into distance learning because that seems to suit people who want to fit things around their busy lives, and it’s not always that easy to get to the central hamish.fletcher@nzherald.co.nz liam.dann@nzherald.co.nz jamie.gray@nzherald.co.nz tamsyn.parker@nzherald.co.nz grant.bradley@nzherald.co.nz anne.gibson@nzherald.co.nz venuto@nzherald.co.nz Phone: 373-6400 business@nzherald.co.nz hembry@nzherald.co.nz shaw@nzherald.co.nz holly.ryan@nzherald.co.nz