Federated Farmers Dairy chairman Andrew Hoggard says the investments will be "a great shot in the arm for jobs building this new capacity, let alone the 75 full-time jobs that will be generated plus many more downstream jobs that will flow from it".
"We're more than pleased to see this investment ahead of this season's peak-milk, given last year's buttermilk lakes represented a lost opportunity.
"Fonterra has recognised the need for more capacity with investments worth over half a billion dollars.
"It also shows how wrong it is to think that milk is a low value export."
Fonterra has announced that approval has been given to build a drier at the Lichfield site in South Waikato:
• Capable of processing up to 4.4 million litres per day
• Similar in size to the world's largest drier at Darfield which produces up to 30 metric tonnes of Whole Milk Powder per hour, and 700 metric tonnes per day
• Will use the latest energy-efficient processing and water reuse technology.
Three plants will also be installed at the Edendale site in Southland:
• Milk Protein Concentrate (MPC) plant which separates protein from skim milk and turns it into protein powder – capable of processing 1.1 million litres per day
• Reverse Osmosis (RO) plant which will increase capacity on an existing drier by 300,000 litres per day
• Anhydrous Milk Fat (AMF) plant capable of processing 550,000 litres of milk into cream per day.
