Top milk price payer Tatua has just 101 shareholders and a waiting list to join.
Top milk price payer Tatua has just 101 shareholders and a waiting list to join.
An $85 million cream products expansion by blue chip dairy payout company Tatua will create around 40 new jobs for the Waikato economy.
The farmer-owned co-operative will double the capacity of its cream-based consumer and food service production with the development now rising at Tatuanui in eastern Waikato, said chiefexecutive Brendhan Greaney.
The project is the single largest investment for the 120-year-old specialised dairy products exporter, which has long been New Zealand’s top milk price payer.
The development is essentially an extension of its capacity to make products such as cream, sour cream, mascarpone, culinary and whipping cream, which the company makes for the New Zealand and retail and food service export markets, Greaney said. Food service markets include hotels, restaurants and catering businesses.
The project, which will be debt-funded, will be commissioned in August next year.
It will result in a significant increase in the volume of cream-based products Tatua turns out and will require around 40 additional staff, Greaney said.
The jobs would be advertised before the project was completed so staff were trained and ready for its commissioning.
Tatua has just 101 farmer-shareholders, all within a 12km radius of its Tatuanui site.
The expansion does not mean it is accepting any more shareholders - rather it will utilise in extra value-add product more of the cream already processed from milk received, Greaney said. Some of this cream currently is used in Tatua’s commodity product export, anhydrous milk fat.
Tatua Co-operative Dairy Company chief executive Brendhan Greaney.
“We’ve got a certain amount of cream available as it stands. Some of it goes into commodities and some into value-add or specialist products. We’ve got more demand now than we can supply for specialist products, so it makes sense to reprioritise that cream across from commodities.”
For commercial reasons, Greaney declined to share production volumes.
Asked about markets and demand for Tatua products, Greaney said the publicly low-profile co-operative was “a relatively small player in a massive global market, so it’s not unexpected that there’s more demand than we can supply”.
“For us, the market is deliberately well-diversified, we’re not reliant on one particular market. These products are exported to a number of countries as well as supplied domestically.”
Australia was considered part of Tatua’s domestic market, he said.
Around 20% of the company’s products were sold through retail outlets in New Zealand and around the world. Most of the expansion capacity would be exported.
Andrea Fox joined the Herald as a senior business journalist in 2018 and specialises in writing about the $26 billion dairy industry, agribusiness, exporting and the logistics sector and supply chains.
