Calls for milk shift amid shortage
Rumblings of an oat milk shortage first reached Stuff early in the new year. Trendy cafe´ -goers reported their local vegan-friendly baristas had run dry on their favourite plant-based milk.
Oat milk is the up-and-comer among the milk alternatives. Almond remains popular, but has lost fans due to environmental concerns. The demand for almonds has caused honeybee catastrophe in the US, as California summons more than half of the country’s bees to pollinate its almond trees. The journey reportedly costs the lives of a quarter of the bees, due to pesticides and disease.
Oat is a favourite. But due to an unusually elongated supply chain for New Zealand, and the unexpected rise in the popularity of oat milk, it has recently proved hard to find.
There are now calls for New Zealand to invest in its own plant-based milk factory, possibly by converting a cow’s milk plant.
The co-founder of Otis Milk, a New Zealand-owned oat milk company, says the country risks falling out of line with global trends if it doesn’t get on board with plant-based milk.
The oat milk shortage at the start of the year was due to shipping issues which affect all sorts of goods trying to make it through the ports.
For months, backlogs, port strikes overseas, staffing and production issues due to the pandemic and fewer flights have meant shipping issues across the globe.
There are no major plant-based milk production facilities in New Zealand. But there are oat farms.
Otis co-founder Chris Wilkie says their oats are grown in Gore, taken to Dunedin for milling, sent to Sweden to be made into milk and then shipped back to New Zealand. In total, it’s a journey of at least 35,000 kilometres.
Sanitarium’s So Good oat milk is produced at its factory in New South Wales.
Wilkie says the latest oat milk shortage is an example of why New Zealand needs its own facility to make plantbased milk. An Otis and NZ Trade and Enterprise study estimated it would cost $73.5 million to build, he says.
‘‘New Zealand has lots of massive dairy factories, we need to transition that infrastructure to dairy free,’’ he says.
The next step for Otis would be investing in New Zealand’s first bigscale plant-based milk factory, he says, but as a small company that will require outside investment.
Sanitarium said a shipment of oat milk arrived last week and was making its way across the country.
But strong demand for oat milk could lead to intermittent shortages, Wilkie said. Otis was working to maintain supplies for its longstanding customers, but its next batch of oat milk wasn’t set to arrive until February.