Few people would guess that, when Ross Telfer heads off for his 4am shift, many Muslims are depending on him.
Telfer is up at 3.15am to make the 20-minute southward drive down SH26 from Hamilton to start work at 4am at Fonterra's Morrinsville butter plant. He's a production supervisor there, overseeing production of the semi-soft 250g and 500g Mainland-branded butter packs that end up on supermarket shelves, bulk butter in 25kg blocks and canned butter for export.
The canned butter line is working flat out producing goods for the Muslim observance month of Ramadan, starting early in June. The production spike is headed for the Middle East and South East Asia where Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset and need to catch up on their day's food in the hours of darkness.
In fact, Morrinsville's production, including the output from its milk powder plants, goes all over the world. Fonterra sells products in 140 markets, providing dairy nutrition to customers and consumers around the globe.
Telfer clocks off again at around 4pm after a 12-hour haul and he's generally in bed early to prepare for the next early morning shift.
How busy he is depends on the time of year. Right now, while the national dairy herd is dried off, the milk tankers aren't rolling up to the plant's doors so frequently and the plant is working from stock.
When he heads home, a second production supervisor takes over for the night shift. In the quiet part of the season, the two rarely see each other. But at "flush," when the national dairy herd hits peak milk flow, they overlap by a couple of hours as the plant goes 24 hours a day.
The early starts and long hours may not be for everyone, but Telfer's happy: "We're more like a family than a workplace here," he says. "We've known each other a long, long time."
The four-days-on, four-days-off rhythm suits him, too. When he's on shift, his wife walks the two family fox terriers (though he's got plenty of time to do that in his downtime) and he spends some time in the garage working on his classic car - a 1963 Pontiac.
The kids have long since left home - his son to journalism and marketing in Melbourne and his daughter to a chef's career in Hamilton.
Telfer himself began work in 1977 at age 17 as a fitter and turner at the old New Zealand Dairy Co-operative Company. He became a welder in the engineering department in 1989 and started at Morrinsville in 1998, shortly before the co-operative merged into Fonterra in 2001.
The average age among the plant's 30-odd "hands-on" machinery operators is around 51, so lining up the next generation of workers is starting to become a planning issue.
It's not that younger people aren't interested in working there, Telfer says - every job Fonterra advertises at the plant is oversubscribed heavily. But, with such a stable workforce, the opportunities are few.
"We're doing some expansion on some of the lines and I'll be pushing to get some younger people."
One of Telfer's first tasks for the day is to make sure the plant is fully staffed: "You get people calling in sick, and that means calling people at 4.30am on their days off. It's not a nice thing to have to do, but it's one of those things."
As a production supervisor he is responsible for 'attainment' - "if we say we'll produce 20 tonnes of product, we have to make sure we do."
Even with shifts working back-to-back, keeping the workforce fed isn't a problem. The local bakery opens at 4am but Telfer says most staff usually bring in their own food.
"It's best to keep meals as routine as possible. As the plant and the workforce get older, we're getting wiser about health and nutrition."
Fonterra helps, with free fruit once a week as part of its Wellbeing programme.
The plant has its own Quality Assurance manager, but Telfer says staff at all levels are responsible for product quality and safety: "We walk that quality line every day. After all, we're making food products for our families."
And for millions of Muslims across the world during Ramadan.