Easy-spread butter hopes

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32978, 26 July 1972, Page 2

Easy-spread butter hopes

(New Zealand Press Association)

PALMERSTON NORTH, July 25.

Easy-spread butter is definitely a marketable proposition, tests just completed by the Dairy Research Institute in Palmerston North have shown.

Mr R. S. Jebson, of the institute. said that the test results had been made available to dairy companies, and that further development was now over to any dairy company that wished to go ahead commercially with tne process. The Kaipara Co-operative Dairy Company is following up the idea. The company’s manager (Mr K. R. Burnett) said the idea had good potential and that the company intended to do follow-up tests to see if the potential could be realised.

Easy-spread butter is made by fractionating butterfat and separating the fats of high and low melting points. This process allows production of both soft and hard butter. After more development, it is hoped, there may be a market for hard butter in tropical countries. However, present limited overseas sales limit disposal opportunities. A butter that is hard enough not to melt in the I tropics has been developed I but there is a problem in : that the melting point is too high to allow butter to

melt in the mouth of the consumer. This means that it is more like chewing suet than eating the butter to which most people are accustomed. Dairy Board research is continuing.