NZ Milk Company has a mid-2010 target date to build a $100-million milk powder plant, and is working towards consents for a plant north of the Waitaki river reports Stuff. The NZMC venture is owned by Ocean Dairy Investments but its backers plan to turn the bulk of ownership over to farmer-suppliers before an eventual corporate listing. The main facilitator of NZMC has been merchant bank Ocean Partners, with director Tim Howe saying the dairy firm has started a resource consent process. NZMC had appointed Apollo Projects to make consent applications to the relevant authorities including Environment Canterbury and Waimate District Council. "The economic value into the region using the factor of two times the (projected annual) turnover (of $150m) is probably $300m of value into South Canterbury," Howe said. NZMC has been in negotiations with farmer suppliers to enable a plant to be built midway between Glenavy and a rival New Zealand Dairies plant at Studholme, near Waimate. Rather than solely target the suppliers of rival milk processing operations, NZMC would look to take on farmers who had recently converted to dairy in the region, given the Hunter Downs irrigation scheme and the North Otago Irrigation Company, based on water from the Waitaki River."We're not targeting other people's supply bases. We're actually seeing growth in the region ... there's 40,000 acres of irrigated land coming in through the Hunter Downs scheme at its maturity," he said."If half of that goes to dairy we are talking about a significant need for additional production facilities in that area." Farmers in the area had relatively large herds and about 50,000 head of cattle were needed for the plant, which could contain a drier to process eight tonnes an hour. A larger 12 tonnes-an-hour unit was also being considered for the export powder. "There is strong demand from the South East Asian region. There's a lot of interest and demand coming out of Japan with the changes to their internal ... trade quota."
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