Dairy Trust Milk Processing Plant, Awarua, New Zealand

New Zealand's Dairy Trust Ltd is the country's latest diary processing company to form following the industry’s restructure seven years ago. It's rapid expansion has seen the diary become a serious rival to Fonterra for domestic milk supply.

Dairy Trust took control of Open Country Cheese in July 2007 by obtaining a majority interest and has since made plans to invest in a network of dairy processing plants in Southland, Wanganui, Waikato and Northland. The first plant in Awarua, Invercargill, began operations on 5 August 2008. A further three plants are due to start up in the next two years, including an expansion of its Open Country Cheese plant. The Dairy Trust group is expecting to process around 1.2 billion litres of milk when all of its facilities are operating.

Trading

In July 2008 Olam International of Singapore paid $101m for a 25% stake in Dairy Trust. This additional capital allowed Dairy Trust to obtain full control of Open Country Cheese Co Ltd by purchasing the remaining shares. Dairy Trust is anticipating a turnover of around NZ$400m and a profit after-tax of about NZ$13m for the July 2009 financial year.

New plant

Construction of the Awarua plant began in September 2007 on a greenfield site adjacent to a meat processing plant near Invercargill. The plant consists of a 31m milk drying tower, tanker unloading bays, silo pads, a packing room, lactose debagging facility, control room, offices and amenities.

The plant will receive about 175 million litres of whole milk from around 80 suppliers. The milk will be pasteurised and dried into powder using a 750kW mechanical vapour recompression fan before being supplied to the food industry.

The Awarua plant has the capacity to process one million litres of milk each day and is capable of drying 50,000l of milk per hour to generate 7.4t of milk powder an hour. In addition, the 8t of cream generated from the plant each day will be processed at another location. The state-of-the-art plant is fully computer controlled and employs 17 staff.

Construction

The facility was constructed by Ebert Construction and the architect was Dickson Lonergan. The processing plant was manufactured and installed by GEA Process Engineering Ltd. Silvester Clark Ltd was the consulting engineering firm for the structural design of the facility, while Steel Pencil provided structural 3D modelling/drawing and steel detailing services for the plant. NDA Engineering fabricated the stainless steel drying and evaporating equipment for the plant. Fabrication services were provided by ETech, Protech Stainless Steel Ltd, Weldtech Ltd, John Jones Steel and Gary Dennison Joinery.

Other subcontractors included Blair Concrete Construction (foundations); Bond Contracts Ltd (underground services); Industrial Surefloors Ltd (flooring installations); Stresscrete Southland Ltd (precast concrete panels and flooring sections); Jeff Evans Ltd (pipe fitting), Patchell Stainless Steel Ltd (tank fabrication); EIS Electrical Ltd (electrical installation); and HG Morsink Ltd (painting).

Bad weather delayed the building process by 31 days and with penalty clauses in place to cover late completion it was a struggle to finish the plant on time. The weather dictated that a 36t cone roof for the drying tower be fabricated on the ground in one piece and then positioned.