Southern Dairy Hub Rides Out Wet Southland Winter
Managing feed by sticking to a firm plan has helped the Southern Dairy Hub (SDH) demonstration farm survive an extremely wet winter, says the farm's acting general manager Greg Delaney.
Chair Maurice Hardie says the conditional agreement on two properties is now pending the satisfaction of a number of minimum requirements for both parties.
The Southern Dairy Hub will be a southern research and development dairying centre.
"This is an important milestone in our plan to build a facility that is a partnership between local farmers, DairyNZ and AgResearch; the new farm will enable local dairy farming issues to be researched on southern soils in southern conditions," Hardie says.
"During late December 2015 and early January 2016 we completed conditional sales and purchase agreements for two adjoining properties. The agreements are however subject to considerable due diligence by ourselves and one of the vendors."
Due diligence may take up to 180 days allowing time for the completion of the necessary resource consenting, design, planning and business case models to be approved by all of the investors.
"Our aim is to start developing the properties from the beginning of October 2016 with the construction of infrastructure starting late October 2016 and the delivery of a completed facility by June 1, 2017."
The Southern Dairy Hub is a collaborative project being developed by AgResearch, DairyNZ and the Southern Dairy Development Trust with a proposed cost of $26.5 million to build. More than $1.3 million has been pledged by local southern farmers. The completed Hub will allow for dairy farmer-led and local issues to be researched on southern soils in southern conditions.
The Southern Dairy Hub will include a 300-380ha dairy farm with four comparative herds of about 200 cows each, as well as buildings for research, demonstration, education and farmer meetings.
