$3m boost for salt company

People driving past the big salt pile at Mount Maunganui might naturally think that when processed it will end up on the dinner table.
No so. A lot of the raw product you see piled at Dominion Salt in Totara St finishes up in intravenous drips and in kidney dialysis machines at overseas hospitals and clinics.
The well-established company, with its head office at the Mount, is the only manufacturer of pharmaceutical-grade sodium chloride (salt) in the southern hemisphere.
A fully automated GMP packing machine, built in Auckland, is now in use at the vacuum pan plant in Totara St.
The new $3 million operation was opened yesterday by former Port of Tauranga chief executive Jon Mayson.
The machine meets the most stringent requirements of good manufacturing practice and will help increase the export of pharmacy salt. The finished product is filtered to five microns.
Dominion Salt regional sales manager Robin Piggott said the machine replaced five people on the production line but there was now no risk of contamination from human contact.
"Over the past two years our customers have been pushing us hard to meet the higher (manufacturing) standard; we had to do it to grow our exports," he said.
"Asia has been tightening up in line with European standards _ and we supply multi-nationals who are based in Europe but have branches in Asia.
"We are proud of the fact that we are able to compete with manufacturers in the northern hemisphere."
Dominion Salt produces 9000 tonnes of pharmacy salt a year and has captured 100 per cent of the pharmaceutical market in Thailand and Malaysia, and 50 per cent in South Korea and Taiwan.
The company sends its premium grade salt to 20 countries mainly in Asia and South America but also to Kenya, Turkey and Australia. It is negotiating new orders in Kuwait, Germany and United States _ and business is taking off in Bangladesh.
"We had an 80-year-old guy there who found us on the internet and wanted to be an agent. He's going for it and is getting plenty of sales," said Mr Piggott.
Dominion Salt is aiming to increase its pharmacy salt exports by 33 per cent to 12,000 tonnes a year by 2009. With the Asian and South American population becoming more affluent, the export market is continually expanding, said Mr Piggott.
"More people can afford to go to hospital for operations. I've seen clinics in Bangkok where the dialysis machines are everywhere and people pay $US50 a session to have their blood purified. Many people in Asia wear contact lenses ... and there increasing opportunities for our salt to be used in washing solutions."
At present 25,000 tonnes of raw solar salt is piled at Totara St. Just 0.9 per cent of the pharmacy salt is used with water in intravenous drips and 20 per cent is used in the dialysis machines. Their total supply can make up a lot of (pharmaceutical) solutions.
Dominion Salt, jointly owned by Cerebos Greggs and Australian Cheetham Salt, processes a total of nearly 40,000 tonnes a year _ the other top-grade salt is sold to the food processing and dairy industries, particularly for making butter and cheese.
The Mount operation also produces another 60,000 tonnes of rough industrial salt that is sent to pulp and paper mills, fertiliser works and water treatment plants. Dominion Salt imports the raw product from South Australia but its main supply is from its own salt field at Lake Grassmere in Canterbury.
Grassmere processes 70,000 tonnes of table salt a year.