Sheep milk venture eyes global market

Spring Sheep Milk aims to tap into a US$ 8 million world market.

“With some effort, and with the right people involved, and the right technology, there is no reason to believe that New Zealand can’t make it a very good industry and be globally competitive in the long term,” says chief executive Scottie Chapman.

Spring Sheep Milk — a joint venture between Landcorp and boutique sales and marketing company SLC — was established in June 2015.

New Zealand has two other large- scale sheep milking companies.

Southland- based Blue River Dairy is Chinese owned and has been going for 10 years.

The other, Maui Milk Company, operates on the southwestern side of Lake Taupo, is 60 per cent owned by Chinese investors and 40 per cent owned by local Maori interests.

Chapman says most of Spring Sheep’s milk is made into nutritional milk products for the Asian market.

Spring Sheep’s aim is to create highvalue branded nutritional and luxury food products made from sheep milk and export them to growth markets, starting with Taiwan, Chapman explains. Sheep milk is rich and creamy, nutritionally dense and easy to digest, he says.

The company is working to build the market first and the business is already producing commercial quantities of sheep milk from a flock of about 3000 animals near Taupo.

Farming sheep for milk has been around for thousands of years.

“Alternative dairy is growing very quickly, with sheep, goat and almond milk growing at about 20 per cent a year,” he says.

It takes 20 sheep to make the same amount of milk as one cow.