Government support for Māori landowners to invest in growing sheep milk industry

File photo / Peter Drury

The Government is backing a project to support Māori landowners to invest in New Zealand's rapidly growing sheep milk industry.

Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor announced today that $700,000 will be injected into the Māori Agribusiness Sheep Milk Collective.

The funding will help the collective explore the potential of their whenua to sustainably produce sheep milk at scale, create jobs and further grow this emerging export market, O'Connor said.

The collective is made up of 20 Māori land trusts and incorporations that own more than 24,000 hectares of land, stretching from the western shore of Lake Taupō to the Hauraki Plains.

Global demand for sheep milk and sheep milk products is booming and exports of New Zealand sheep milk products were valued at $20 million in 2020.

The collective had ambitious goals to have multiple farms milking about 25,000 sheep and potentially employing more than 100 people by 2030, O'Connor said.

"Those sheep could initially produce more than six million litres of milk or one million kilograms of milk solids, and within a kaupapa Māori-owned value chain," O'Connor said.

The collective was set up through the Ministry for Primary Industries' Māori Agribusiness Extension (MABx) programme, which has been allocated $12 million over four years to provide farmer-to-farmer support to Māori landowners and trustees.

The investment was part of the Government's Fit for a Better World roadmap, which aimed for food and fibre sector exports to earn an extra $44 billion over 10 years, O'Connor said.

MPI's Māori Agribusiness team had partnered with 26 Māori agribusiness clusters across the motu since 2019, helping Māori landowners access support and expertise, O'Connor said.

The Government is also supporting wider industry research to capitalise on the growing demand for sheep milk.

"MPI is funding a $12.56 million six-year project with the aim of building a high-value and sustainable sheep dairy industry in Aotearoa New Zealand."

Last year construction and development was taking place across several new sheep dairy farms in the greater Waikato and a new infant formula was launched as part of the project, O'Connor said.

"We are focused on our economic recovery from Covid-19. By strengthening the environmental credentials of our food and fibre products and capturing further value growth, Fit for a Better World drives us along that recovery."