Fonterra is banking on continuing dairy development in Canterbury with plans to build another milk processing plant in the region inside the next two years.Late yesterday afternoon the company announced it had taken options on land which would be used to
Fonterra is banking on continuing dairy development in Canterbury with plans to build another milk processing plant in the region inside the next two years.
Late yesterday afternoon the company announced it had taken options on land which would be used to build a plant at Darfield, in central Canterbury, about 45km from Christchurch.
In a statement, Fonterra’s trade and operations director Gary Romanao said the development would be among the largest investments in New Zealand in the past five years and would cater for strong milk growth in the area.
“Canterbury is the fastest growing dairying region in New Zealand. It is now producing about 15% of the country’s milk for export and growing at a rate of more than 5% annually,” he said.
Mr Romano said the plant would create about 50 new jobs.
The proposed plant could include a high efficiency milk power processor, similar to the Fonterra’s giant factory at Edendale at Southland handling up to 2.2 million litres of milk a day.
That volume is equivalent to about 200 farms in Canterbury.
Another option includes building a plant to produce high value nutritional milk powders.
