Long-life creain off to good start

Press, 13 July 1984, Page 25

Long-life creain off to good start

Canterbury Dairy Farmers’ long-life Crown cream, being test marketed at present, is selling better than expected and receiving a generally favourable response from purchasers. The U.H.T. cream is the; latest in a line of new products from Canterbury Dairy Farmers, the town milk supply company which has been transformed in the last three years. The general manager of C.D.F., Mr Geoff Lorigan, said that sales of Crown cream in one location were three times better than anticipated and in another location were up to expectations.

The cream is being sold in twin quarter-pint (150 gram) packs, enabling consumers to use half a normal sized retail quantity of cream (half-pint) and save the rest.

The product will stay fresh without refrigeration for several weeks. That is

the result of the ultrapastuerisation treatment and the packaging which the cream receives in C.D.F.’s new $2 million machinery. This machinery has given C.D.F. a range of diversified products away from its traditional role as processor and bottler of more than 80 per cent of Christchurch’s whole milk. It now retails long-life flavoured milk and “mini portions”, or 15ml packs of U.H.T. milk for the hotel trade, flavoured milk in larger cartons, fruit juice in cartons (called Cool Change) and in bottles the long-life cream. The cream, mini portions and flavoured milk are all packaged on the new Formseal machinery. Such machinery is normally able to handle only one size of package but the C.D.F. machine does several sizes. —15 ml, 150 ml and 300 ml. Getting a range of sizes on such a machine was

pioneering technology, explained Mr Lorigan, but the company hopes this versatility will make the diversification successful enough to eliminate any whole milk or cream surplus problems the company has had during past years. Surpluses, usually in spring, have totalled as high was 11 million litres annually. These have been handled by separation, with the skim milk going to the Plains Dairy Company for drying and the cream going for butter or ice cream manufacture. Should the Crown cream reach its national and export sales targets it would account for over 6 million litres of the 11 million surplus.

It takes 7.5 litres of whole milk to make one litre of Crown cream. The cream must be totally free of the bacteria which are always present in fresh cream. It must also be able to be whipped, which Mr Lorigan said was a difficult thing to achieve with U.H.T. cream.

The export potential of all the U.H.T. products is very good, he said. He expects mini portions of milk to find their way into hotel rooms and onto in-flight airline food trays throughout the world, carrying their full colour rotogravure pictures of New Zealand scenic spots. The mini portions, which have been available since the end of last year, have

been popular with the local hotel trade. They avoid the necessity of jugs or half-pint bottles of milk in every room or in the refrigerator down the corridor. C.D.F. can also do 300 ml long-life whole milk, which would be targeted to motels for guests’ breakfast trays. The export potential of the cream lies in its unique twin-packaging, Mr Lorigan said. “Tetra-bricks” of U.H.T. cream are produced in and exported by many countries. New Zealand also exports them, from the only other U.H.T. plant in the country, in Auckland. But the smallest tetra-brick for milk is usually 250m1s and the Formseal container, made of white pressed plastic, and the foil lid provide better colour display and printing opportunities. C.D.F. has gone for a golden “Crown” seal for the lid and bold black, red and white colouring on the labels. The red and the black betray the company’s provincial loyalties. The red is also usefuiT for picturing strawberries covered with cream.

With the launch of their new products after eighteen months of planning and installation of equipment, C.D.F. has adopted a higher public profile, even taking out full-page advertisements in newspapers to inform its consumers of progress and products. The board and management of the company could see very little on the horizon three years ago except slowly declining whole milk sales.

It took the plunge into flavoured milk and then U.H.T. processing, investing heavily in machinery and marketing. Mr Lorigan was brought in from the Auckland Milk Corporation, where he had spent 13 years in all facets of processing and management. C.D.F. has also computerised and modernised a lot of its plant and records. Mr Lorigan also paid tribute to a “top team of

people with financial and technical skills.”

During the last few years there has also been a shift in the pattern of whole milk bottle sales. Homogenised milk is now 20 per cent of the market in Christchurch and non-fat 5 per cent.

Cream sales have increased this year by 4.5 per cent over last year, a trend Mr Lorigan said is reflected the world over. Many people now regarded cream as an affordable luxury, able to be bought more regularly than in past decades. He does not think that Crown cream will ever replace bottled cream. The new product should be creating extra sales, he believes, because its long storage life and twin pack mean that it can be bought and put away. The next big shift in the domestic milk market could be the introduction of cardboard packaging. How does Mr Lorigan feel about that? He said that the package would allow more product information to be printed and displayed. It would facilitate the development of national brands for different types of milk (including doing away with the obscure term “homogenised” (so that marketing could utilise these brands rather than just generically promoting “milk”). He does see the development of regional or company brands as a good thing but is suggesting something more like the Big M flavoured milk approach. The challenge facing town milk supply companies, he believes, is to arrest the decline in milk consumption with increasing age in consumers.

“Everyone starts off life as a 100 per cent milk drinker.

“But by the time they get to be aged 20 milk consumption is low on average. We have got to make milk more attractive to older people,” he said.