Big new N.Z. dairy store to open in Britain

Press, 9 June 1980, Page 12

Big new N.Z. dairy store to open in Britain

From KEN COATES in London

In spite of uncertainty about New Zealand’s future butter-exports quota to Britain, the New Zealand Dairy Board has invested $24 ’ million in a new cold store and package plant at Swindon, 120 km west of London. The most modern of its type in Europe, the factory will be officially opened this week by the Duke of Kent.

The plant, almost hospi-tal-like with its whitecoated employees’and sterile atmosphere, has been in full production since December. Officials of the marketing arm of the board. Anchor Foods, Ltd, which runs the complex, are confident it will never become a white elephant, even if cuts are imposed in the volume of butter New Zealand is allowed to export to Britain. It greatly increases the amount of butter sold in Britain over which New Zealand can retain direct quality control. With a packing factory

in London and the new Swindon plant, Achor Foods now has the capacity to pack and distribute about three-quarters of all New Zealand butter sold in Britain, based on the 1980 quota of 115,000 tonnes.

The remainder is packed under contract in the North of England and Scotland, and clearly represents a buffer should exports be substantially reduced. New Zealand Cheddar cheese will also be packaged at Swindon and marKeted under the Anchor brand, starting this year after machinery is installed.

Of the . 9500-tonne annual quota for cheese. '>soo tonnes can be sold for direct consumption, and the remainder for processing.

The new Swindon plant basically conditions and reworks imported blocks of frozen New Zealand butter into a form that can be salted and prepared for packaging into 250 g packs. It is untouched by hand,

and all processes are highly automated, the butter being forced along stainless steel piping for packaging. Anchor Foods offtcals claim that by processing the butter in Britain, rather than New Zealand, its quality and taste are better.

Anchor butter, themost p o p u 1 ar with the British. housewife, accounts for between 25 to 30 per cent .of all butter eaten in Britain and competes with Irish, English, and Continental butter.

Commenting on the huge investment in the new plant, which employs more than 200 people, the managing director of Anchor (Mr Murray Gough) said it represented confidence in the level of the future quota. He declined to speculate on the level of exports after this year. This would be decided by the European Economic Community Council of Ministers possibly about the end of July. ’ ’

He said none of the

E.E.C. countries was now saying New Zealand butter should be excluded from the Community. This was an advance on the attitude of a couple of years ago. Mr Gough said that while the company’s basic objective was to sell New Zealand butter and cheese efficiently, dairy products from other countries could be handled and marketed in the future. This’ would mean developing marketing, while retaining Anchor’s basic object of selling New Zealand produce. Butter arriving at Swindon by road can be held in a giant refrigerated. lOm-high chamber at minus 10 deg. C. This huge refrigerator can hold 12,000 tonnes. At present the butter is .shipped in cartoned 25kg blocks, but there are plans to do away with cartons, shipping in larger, onetonne blocks wrapped in polythene film. This will represent a considerable saving.

Butter processed ready for supermarket sale is distributed by the company in a fleet of 22 refrigerated trucks.