Factory commitment helps town smile

Fonterra's decision to spend $15 million upgrading its Maungaturoto dairy factory has brought a "big sigh of relief" from the factory's 152 staff.
The capital injection, most of which would be spent replacing gas burners for two milk powder driers and automating the powder plant, showed Fonterra was committed to to keeping the 103-year-old Maungaturoto site operating, manager Paul Henare said yesterday.
The powder plant - which processes up to 900,000 litres of milk daily and produces 26,000 tonnes of whole milk powder annually - will shut down from March to July next year while the upgrade takes place.
The changes will not increase production or reduce staff at the factory, which is the leading employer in Maungaturoto, population 850.
During the shutdown staff will be trained to handle automated equipment designed to modernise operations in the 30-year-old plant.
On completion, the upgrade will bring to $30 million the amount Fonterra has spent at the factory since 2000.
Fonterra director Greg Gent, of Ruawai, said Maungaturoto played a key part in the company's overall processing strategy and would continue to do so.
Asked about Fonterra considering closing Maungaturoto and concentrating Northland production at Kauri, he said that idea had been rejected as uneconomic even before the merger forming the giant co-operative in 2001.
Kaipara Economic Development Trust chairman Marshall Taylor, of Mangawhai, said some factory staff commuted to work from Kaiwaka, Ruawai, Waipu and Mangawhai and the $15 million upgrade would have "fantastic" economic and social spinoffs.
Milk collected from Helensville north to about Waipu and Dargaville is delivered to the Maungaturoto factory, which processes up to 2.4 million litres daily, producing wholemilk and skim milk powder, rennet casein and whey powder.
It also makes buttermilk from a Kauri cream processing byproduct and blends milk powder with sugar and protein, but the sugar blending business will be transferred to Singapore next year.
Milk contains about 13 percent solids when it arrives at the Maungaturoto factory, where it is sprayed into the two powder driers, operating at 215deg Celsius, which reduce it to 97 percent solids.
The driers, which can produce up to 2.5 tonnes of milk powder an hour, are small compared with some in other factories. The average drier in Fonterra plants produces 8-10 tonnes of powder an hour and the factory at Te Rapa produces 22 tonnes an hour.
The Maungaturoto driers, oil-fired until the mid 1980s, are supplied gas by a spur from the pipe carrying Taranaki gas from Auckland to Marsden Pt and Whangarei.