A winning formula
Blue River has grown out of its infancy into a global player
In the space of 15 years, Blue River Dairy LP has gone from a boutique sheep cheese producer to a global player on the infant formula market.
The international company, with a presence in China, Europe and Southland, is in the midst of building a second production line at its plant in Invercargill to double production from about 7.5 million cans of infant formula this year to about 15 million by the end of next year.
In the past 12 months, the number of staff the company has employed in Invercargill has doubled from about 50 to more than 100.
The production line the company has built is expected to create another 20 jobs on its own.
A new production line is being built because it will allow the company to register another three brands to put into the Chinese market.
Blue River Dairy LP general manager Robert Boekhout said to innovate it would have to build a new premises.
He is hopeful the production line would be up and running by the middle of 2019.
The Blue River Dairy group now has factories in Italy and New Zealand and a head office in China.
The latest piece of legislation China introduced required all infant formula manufacturers to register their brands and recipes with the China Food And Drug Administration in order to import their products in China after January 1, 2018.
The move came about as a response to the growing amount of infant formula brands on the market that numbered more than 2000, Boekhout said.
Each infant formula plant was limited to supplying a maximum of three registered brands and each was required to be significantly different, he said.
It prevented companies from repackaging the same infant formula as different brands in the marketplace.
Out of the 16 infant formula manufacturers in New Zealand, Blue River Dairy is the only one with three registered brands in China.
The company is producing infant formula from sheep, goat and cow milk.
The key to the success for the company has been its agility and innovation, which had allowed the company to meet the quality standards for the company to get market access, he said.
As the market for its products has grown considerably, both the sheep and goat products are in double-digit growth, the company has had to turn to global commodities suppliers.
Many of the ingredients for infant formula are imported from Europe, blended and packaged in Southland before being exported to China.
When Blue River first started in Southland it focused on cheese made from sheep from milk. It then expanded to icecream, milk and milk powder from sheep.
Today though, the infant formula using milk from sheep, goats and cows is its major export product.
The sheep milk industry in New Zealand was boutique and in its infancy, so to meet the demand of the Chinese market the company had to source sheep and goat products from both local and overseas suppliers, mostly from the Mediterranean, he said.
As for cow products the company was spoilt for choice with suppliers in New Zealand, Boekhout said.
Blue River Dairy LP won the Primary Sector Business Award at the 2017 Westpac Southland Business Excellence Awards.