Natural Dairy starts selling NZ dairy products in China
Date: 21 Jun 2011Natural Dairy NZ Holdings, the Hong Kong company blocked from buying the Crafar farms last year, has started selling New Zealand-made dairy products in China after UBNZ Funds Management was granted approval to export. Natural Dairy told the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that it sold 100,000 cans of colostrums formula at a profit through its Chinese subsidiary, Jiang Xi Guo Yuan (Natural Dairy), and has received 11.6 million packs of ultra-heat treated milk from UBNZ Funds Management. The ... more
Engineering company discovers brand essence through design
Date: 17 Jun 2011Dow Design presents new visual identity for ‘Milmeq’ After a year of working together, Dow Design has revealed the new visual identity and company name for the merged businesses which formerly made up the Realcold Milmech group. The engineering company which specialises in the manufacture of food processing systems for the international market, will now trade as ‘Milmeq’, pronounced mil-mek. A transition from Milmech, it acknowledges the group’s heritage ... more
Report: milk overpriced by $195 million
Date: 16 Jun 2011New Zealanders could be paying $195 million too much for milk from Fonterra each year, a dairy industry report says. The report claims there is an annual transfer of $195 million from Kiwi consumers and other dairy companies to Fonterra farmers because the milk price can be boosted by at least 15c per 11.6 litres of milk. It has been provided to the Commerce Commission, which is conducting an investigation into whether a full milk price-control inquiry is warranted after an industry ... more
ZESPRI releases new variety licences
Date: 15 Jun 2011The world’s most successful horticulture marketer, ZESPRI Group Ltd, today announced the release of up to 400 hectares of new variety licences, to help meet strong future market demand for premium quality ZESPRI® Kiwifruit. Up to 200 hectares of a sweet green variety, Green14, and up to 200 hectares of a gold variety, Gold3, both commercialised in June last year, will be licensed to be planted or grafted by growers over the next two seasons. This represents an increase of ... more
Research breakthrough finds heat can kill Psa in kiwifruit pollen
Date: 15 Jun 2011Important development reached in key Psa research programme An important development in delivering Psa-clean pollen to the kiwifruit industry has been reached, with research establishing a high temperature treatment can kill Psa without impacting viability of the pollen. The research carried out with funding from ZESPRI and Kiwifruit Vine Health (KVH) with research partner Plant & Food Research Ltd, working with industry pollen producer Kiwi Pollen NZ Ltd, provides a potential ... more
2011 vintage to support continuing sales growth
Date: 14 Jun 2011The 2011 New Zealand grape harvest has been completed with more grapes being picked in response to rising sales of New Zealand wine. "New Zealand wine sales have been very strong in the past year (equivalent to 310,000 tonnes of grapes) and a larger harvest was needed in 2011 to rebuild inventory and to support current and future sales. With lower stocks in winery cellars, this has prompted a grape intake this year of 328,000 tonnes of grapes, slightly up on our pre-harvest expectation ... more
A tasty plan to create thousands of new jobs
Date: 13 Jun 2011Just behind the shiny new park-and-ride facility on the way to Auckland Airport, a more modest building is taking shape that symbolises plans to create jobs. The $8 million Manukau Food Innovation Centre, due to open on September 1, will give food manufacturers a facility to produce trial commercial runs of new products at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, rather than millions. Its backers believe the processed food industry, which employs about 12,000 people across Auckland, has ... more
New technology key in securing export deal for avocado growers
Date: 13 Jun 2011The Kiwi avocado industry has secured a multi-million dollar export deal with Japan thanks to its new food processing technology. The food preserving technology, introduced earlier this year, dramatically extends the shelf life of avocados without the use of any chemicals or other additives. The Ultra High Pressure (UHP) processing technology, which is also known as cold pasteurization, uses pressures of up to 87,000 psi to shock and kill bacteria in food products. Kiwi owned ... more
New Zealand kiwifruit industry sets new shipping record
Date: 7 Jun 2011In a New Zealand kiwifruit industry first, 160 refrigerated containers, containing 832,000 trays of ZESPRI® Kiwifruit, have been loaded and delivered to the Port of Tauranga for export in a 12-hour period. This new shipping record for the industry meant that over the 12-hour period on Saturday, 4 June a container was loaded with kiwifruit every four-and-a-half minutes. Tauranga Kiwifruit Logistics General Manager Ian Mearns said the record number of containers loaded was a testament ... more
Location may add to baker's problems
Date: 2 Jun 2011The receivers and management of Yarrows (The Bakers) Limited are staying tight-lipped about the problems that led to one of New Zealand's last remaining independent bread bakers going into receivership. But a food industry source says the business's location in the small Taranaki town of Manaia - about 300km from its main market in Wellington - proved problematic for the firm. The source said rising raw ingredient costs, especially wheat, coupled with tough economic conditions might ... more
