Muldoon opened enlarged factory

Here’s a photograph that illustrates a significant chapter in the history of Taranaki’s dairy industry – it’s of then prime minister Rob Muldoon touring a freshly extended Moa-Nui Co-operative Dairies Ltd factory at Inglewood.

Also in the photograph, published in February 1982, are Mr Muldoon’s wife Thea (left) and Moa-Nui chairman Don Slater and his wife Ailsa.

The photograph is significant because Moa-Nui Co-operative Dairies Ltd had been formed just a couple of years before via the amalgamation of the Bell Block-Clifton, Lepperton and Moa dairy companies, making it the sixth-largest dairy co-operative in the country, servicing an area from Awakino to Tataraimaka and Tariki.

It operated buildings and a plant at Brixton and Inglewood, and Moa-Nui’s product mix included butter, cheese, casein and skim milk powder.

Not long after its formation the company spent $11 million updating facilities at both sites.

The Inglewood complex accounted for the bulk of this spending, with $4m spent on an automated butter-making plant and $3m on a building extension programme – and that’s what the prime minister’s visit was all about. But Moa-Nui didn’t last that long. During the 1980s the amalgamation of Taranaki dairy companies continued on its inexorable way, and in 1989 Moa-Nui joined forces with Opunake-headquartered Egmont Cooperative Dairy Co Ltd before the whole enterprise merged with Kiwi Dairies in 1991 which resulted in the closure of the Inglewood and Brixton factories.