Chinese strategy
OPINION: Fonterra may have sold its dairy farms in China but the appetite for collaboration with the country remains strong.
Last year they were in the news over the 20,000 golf balls, that for ten years had strayed onto their property from an adjacent golf course.
The issue has now been settled by the Tait-Jamieson’s purchase of the golf course. The fairways and greens once a mecca for golfers will eventually revert to pasture.
Dairy farming runs in Jamie’s blood. His great-grandfather bought the farm in 1942 and Jamie followed in his grandfather’s and father’s footsteps when he began sharemilking there in 1977. By 1980 the farm was operating on biodynamic principles.
Before coming to the farm, Jamie had studied science in Wellington and gained a BA (psychology) and later a diploma in dairy technology. He worked for New Zealand Cooperative Dairy Company on the processing floor and in the laboratory and later worked for Walls Ice Cream. Yoghurt he knew nothing about.
In 1986, Jamie and Cathy, members of a family trust running the farm, gained organic certification and began making their own yoghurt for sale in supermarkets. Various other family and outside ownership arrangements existed until last year when Jamie and Cathy finally gained sole ownership of the business called Biofarm.
Today business is good and Jamie says every year there has been growth. They’ve come a long way from the day in 1986 when they decided to be different.
“Our yoghurt business started because the town milk industry we were supplying was going to be deregulated and eventually abolished. There was no possibility of obtaining sufficient land within the city boundary to expand, given the prices paid by the dairy industry at the time,” says Jamie.
They knew nothing about making yoghurt and so got the milk company to make it for them for six months. But when the dairy company decided to close its yoghurt making plant they faced giving the idea away or going it alone. They chose the latter and in 1988 built their own small factory.
“We started off small and kept our quota going with the milk company for two or three years and remained in the town milk industry. In fact we bought the milk back from them when our plant became operable in 1988. However after a couple of years we handed back our quota and used most of our own milk for yoghurt production. What surplus we had we sold back to the company.” Today all the milk produced on the farm is used for their yoghurt or organic milk.
Although Jamie had worked in the dairy industry, he admits to zero experience in yoghurt making. But he and Cathy learned quickly and soon developed a quality product snapped up by supermarkets.
While Jamie focuses on the farm and ‘crafting’ each batch of yoghurt, Cathy, also from a farming background, focuses on marketing and promotion. In 1997, she won the Overall Excellence in Business Award in the Maori Woman’s Business Awards. Biofarm has also been a finalist in the Manawatu Business Awards.
Today they produce 750,000-800,000L of yoghurt each year, packed in attractively designed, branded containers. Flavours include bush honey, wild apple and natural.
As well as the cows, the Tait-Jamiesons have a flock of 300 polled Dysdale sheep and 400 meat goats on their property.
But it’s the yoghurt and organic milk that has given them the public profile. They remain passionately dedicated to their organic farming principle and determined to ensure another generation carries on from them. By their own admission they are outside the square, but given what they have achieved by hard work and determination, their square is remarkable.
www.biofarm.com
