Butter Milk Powder Factory

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 72, 23 July 1948, Page 5

Butter Milk Powder Factory

£25,000 SCHEME WILL GO AHEAD A new dried butter milk factory operating in conjunction with the present butter factory is to be erected by the Rangitaiki Plains Co-operative Dairy Company at an estimated cost of £25,000. The new branch of the company’s activities is expected to begin production on July 1 next year. This was the decision of an extraordinarygeneral meeting of the shareholders held at Edgecumbe yesterday to consider proposals put up by the directors for the manufacture of dried butter milk powder or whole milk powder. In opening the meeting, the chairman of directors, Mr S. C. Spence, outlined the scheme from its first beginnings nearly "three years ago, -showing how the company had been working on and collecting data for two schemes for the production of either whole milk or buttermilk .powders. About three years ago, he said, the Company found that it would be necessary to spell the large pig farm for a number of years, as the buildings were becoming unhabitable through disease prevalence. A •communication with the Minister of Agriculture, then Mr B. Roberts, , as to whether the company should produce dried butter milk then, was not viewed with favour, and a suggestion that pig meats were more . essential was the reply. The company then started on a £12,000 reorganisation scheme for the piggeries. A recent request for more milk powder by the British Ministry of Food again prompted the company to consider the dried butter milk scheme with the reorganised piggeries only half completed. It was .proposed to leave the piggery as it was and operate it at half its projected carrying capacity on half of the butter milk. Investigation had shown that the dried whole milk idea was impossible. And so further details were obtained on the butter milk scheme. Continuing, Mr Spence explained that it took 10 tons of butter to make 1 ton of dried' 1 butter milk powder and on this basis, if the company were to use half of its fiutter milk for drying, it would make annually 250 tons of the finished product. He then gave numerous instances of local and overseas demand for the New Zealand product, which he said was considered very highly ■overseas: The profit from this venture, he considered, would be well above the best previous season’s returns i from the pig farm,’£3,3oo. The new site for the building is to be in the lot adjacent to the present boilers so as to -be close to the steam and raw product supply. Two -new boilers at the factory have a capacity of 18,0001bs of steam an hour which, after the factory’s 10,0001bs have been used, will leave ample steam to operate the three Simons Roller butter milk driers -it is proposed to instal. The meeting’s decision was unanimous.