Open Country opens butter plant
When American retail giant Cosco came to audit Open Country Dairy’s new butter plant at the Waharoa site and give the green light to supply their American stores, they allowed themselves a week for the exercise.
GEA is working with Calder Stewart Rural Buildings to build Norbco barns and its Fieldays site will have a partial section of a Norbco barn.
GEA capital equipment North Island sales manager Adam Franklin says the barn structure is aimed at giving site visitors a sense of scale and dimension, incorporating bails and a Houle scraper system.
“With interest increasing in barn housing systems, we want to give farmers a better sense of the barn ‘experience’ and what sort of dimensions cows enjoy, and the type of equipment that integrates into a barn environment specifically designed for cow comfort.”
The company is also exhibiting its Houle slope screen separator, with a screen shape and design that has no moving parts, keeping maintenance simple and minimal.
GEA’s high compression XScrew press will be displayed for the first time, intended for dairy effluent output with higher than average solids content.
The company’s dairy hygiene division FIL will present its ‘Quality Milk’ programme – a simple, two step formula where a clean dairy + healthy cows = quality milk.
The programme links FIL’s new dairy detergents with udder health treatments including Teatshield and Iodoshield teat sprays.
A display of Milfos iCORE milking technology will show how the system can be upgraded and future-proofed for matching to the level of data capture that best suits a farmer, “safe in the knowledge that if they wish to move up another level they do not have to install a completely new system to do so”.
Although the MIOne robotic milker may not physically be on site, a video feed from a farm installation will show the level of innovative technology in the MIOne system. The latest robotic arm will also be on display, showing how simply it operates and its focus on udder health.
