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FONTERRA'S DECISION to pump $555 million into Edendale and Lichfield plant upgrades represents a huge vote of confidence in the dairy industry and the provinces.
Federated Farmers Dairy chairman Andrew Hoggard says the investments will be "a great shot in the arm for jobs building this new capacity, let alone the 75 full-time jobs that will be generated plus many more downstream jobs that will flow from it".
"We're more than pleased to see this investment ahead of this season's peak-milk, given last year's buttermilk lakes represented a lost opportunity.
"Fonterra has recognised the need for more capacity with investments worth over half a billion dollars.
"It also shows how wrong it is to think that milk is a low value export."
Fonterra has announced that approval has been given to build a drier at the Lichfield site in South Waikato:
• Capable of processing up to 4.4 million litres per day
• Similar in size to the world's largest drier at Darfield which produces up to 30 metric tonnes of Whole Milk Powder per hour, and 700 metric tonnes per day
• Will use the latest energy-efficient processing and water reuse technology.
Three plants will also be installed at the Edendale site in Southland:
• Milk Protein Concentrate (MPC) plant which separates protein from skim milk and turns it into protein powder – capable of processing 1.1 million litres per day
• Reverse Osmosis (RO) plant which will increase capacity on an existing drier by 300,000 litres per day
• Anhydrous Milk Fat (AMF) plant capable of processing 550,000 litres of milk into cream per day.
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