Chinese consumers love the novelty and security of one of New Zealand's most valuable exports - mozzarella cheese.
That's the firm opinion of South Canterbury dairy farmer Cara Gregan, one of the few farmers to witness the pasture-to-plate journey of New Zealand dairy in China.
"They love the stretchiness of it - its novelty value is like the old bubble gum phenomenon - but they are also into the fact their food has come from a safe and healthy place," says Gregan, calling on her observations from a visit to China at Easter.
The stretchy cheese is one of the brightest stars in Fonterra's dairy domain, a stellar example of a high-return, value-added product from commodity raw material.
Gregan, 44 and a Fonterra shareholder farmer, thinks the focus on mozzarella is not just a winner but a game-changer. That goes double for her native South Canterbury - the humble region now being transformed into the world's mozzarella capital, stimulating many new jobs.
Her 1000 cows are among those whose milk is transformed into mozzarella at the co-op's Clandeboye site. That's the place where Fonterra are investing $240 million into an expansion which will double its already world-class mozzarella production reaching 70 markets round the world.
Already Fonterra cheese tops about 50 per cent of the millions of pizzas produced in China. Clandeboye's latest expansion (following a $70m upgrade in 2013) means in recent years Fonterra will have put over $300m into a plant which will be the biggest producer of mozzarella in the southern hemisphere, currently pumping out enough cheese to top 300 million pizzas a year.
Gregan, after a visit to Beijing, knows what the appeal of New Zealand mozzarella is: "You see it when you walk into a big chain like Big Pizza," she says of her visit there with 16-year-old daughter Anna. "You watch their faces - they love it.
"When you walk in, there is often a poster on the walls of the pizza place showing a green pasture or similar scene. They consider it vital to have food they know has come from a safe and healthy place.
"Then there's the novelty value - you see young people in particular playing stretch games with the cheese while they are eating it. I'm talking 18-25s, I guess, and the fun they were having with that stretchy cheese immediately made me think of the old bubble gum craze.
"You see families there as well and some older people - usually grandparents looking after children while the parents are at work."
Fonterra's latest analysis of the market reveals 40 per cent of urban Chinese eat in Western-style fast food outlets once a week, with use of dairy in food services growing by 30 per cent over five years.
"Those young people in the pizza joints are the ones who see and are knowledgeable about Western culture and the things people in the West do," says Gregan. "They are the ones on the internet the most and are most conscious of the need to know what they are putting in their bodies."
However, it's one thing to have an in-demand product; it's another to be able to produce enough to meet demand.
That's where the cleverness of Clandeboye and Fonterra's research arm comes in. They have developed a mozzarella-making process which could be one of the biggest food secrets since KFC's "secret recipe" and Coca-Cola's ingredients.
Watch the early risers from the Temuka creating world class mozzarella cheese!
Clandeboye plant manager Alice van den Hout says the world-first process of making the cheese, (developed in Fonterra's Palmerston North research base) enabled traditional methods - which take three months to make a finished cheese - to be reduced to six hours.
"And we are talking natural," she says. "There are no chemicals in our mozzarella. That's a huge advantage over our competitors. Many of them make mozzarella but they have to add chemicals to shorten the process.
"That means it can't be certificated as mozzarella - they have to label it as 'pizza cheese'.
Just think of the difference that makes; we produce genuine mozzarella from grass-fed cows while others have to call it pizza cheese...there's no comparison."
Even more, the mozzarella is specifically made to be super-stretchy and to have that New Zealand creamy, buttery taste - another reason why Fonterra is aiming for growing their food services business into a $5 billion enterprise by 2023.
Another happy by-product is the effect on South Canterbury - both van den Hout and Gregan say the Clandeboye mozzarella plant expansion is passing a current of enthusiasm and optimism through the South Canterbury region.
There will be 115 new jobs created to add to the 865 already existing; last month up to 2000 people crammed into a recruitment day at Clandeboye - with 700 job applications being made for various posts.
Chief executive of Aoraki Development, economic development agency for the Timaru region, Nigel Davenport, says: "The collective impact, including the salaries from these roles, will total about $7.5m for the area - and that's immense."
The new jobs meant about 400 people would enter the region as families moved there and there would be trickle-down benefits to local business, schools and other organisations he said - "actually, it's more like a waterfall than a trickle."
"You can feel the excitement here," says van den Hout while Gregan says: "Who would have thought little South Canterbury would become such a big wheel in the mozzarella cheese world?"