Irish show how it's done
MPI director general Ray Smith reckons NZ has a lot to learn from the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority – called Teagasc (pronounced ‘Chog us’).
Piper Systems Ltd, Co.Wicklow, Ireland, has made these products for 20 years; THS is established in the supply and servicing of the hydraulic pumps used in all NZ dairy tankers.
“We already have a Certificate of Approval from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs under the weights and measures regulations and are now doing feasibility trials with one of NZ’s bigger dairy companies,” says Piper Systems chief executive, Archie Hamilton.
Piper is well established in Ireland with Lakeland Dairies, one of Ireland’s biggest dairy companies. Its fleet of 60+ tankers uses Piper’s pumping and recording equipment. Lakeland has 2200 family farmer suppliers and in 2014 year had turnover of €625.8 million ($NZ1 billion).
Piper has 120 units with six different dairy companies in Ireland, 220 in the UK and 120 with two transport companies collecting milk in Australia. Their gear is also gaining acceptance in the US.
The use of Piper’s measurement guarantees the accuracy of volume reading and the samples are 100% representative of the milk collected. Piper samplers can also collect two identical samples if one is required by the farmer.
With the Piper milk assembly portal, farm collection data is automatically transferred to secure dedicated cloud servers where live and historical data is available. Benefits include automatic transfer of collection and delivery information. There is no internal IT hardware or support required, it allows effective load planning and better route planning and mapping and reduces support costs.
“Another important point about the units is their light weight which helps lower fuel costs,” said THS managing director Brenden Lyons.
He reports also that the units cause less product damage.
