Dairy Factory Staff Hold Conference

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32035, 9 July 1969, Page 18

Dairy Factory Staff Hold Conference

The first conference of South Island dairy factory managers, assistants and directors, was held in Christchurch yesterday. There was an attendance of about 70.

Opening the conference, the president of the South Island branch of the Dairy Factory Managers’ Association, Mr G. E. Maxwell, of Temuka, said that at a time of changing markets and tastes and the constant call for new products and new ideas in presentation of these products they had a fairly constant task in keeping up with modern trends. It was not many years ago, he said, when they were making only butter and cheese. Now they were making dozens of different products and variants of the basic products.

Among those taking part in the conference were Dr W. A. McGillivray, director of the Dairy Research Institute, Dr P. S. Robertson, the assistant director of the institute, Messrs W. Milne and R. W. Russell, of the institute staff, and Messrs W. F. B. Connell,

assistant director of the Dairy Division of the Department of Agriculture, and I. Willis, superintendent of butter instruction at head office of the Dairy Division of the Department of Agriculture. In the course of his paper Mr Milne mentioned the use of continuous butter making machine, of which Dr McGillivray said that there were three makes in New Zealand. Dr Robertson, who described developments in the mechanisation of cheese production. showed slides of a new factory at Warkworth, which he described as the most mechanised cheese factory in the world. New Zealand's second largest dairy company, the Kiwi company, he said, was planning a new factory, for which the equipment alone would cost about $500,000, but it would pay for this investment in less than a year.