Open Country opens butter plant
When American retail giant Cosco came to audit Open Country Dairy’s new butter plant at the Waharoa site and give the green light to supply their American stores, they allowed themselves a week for the exercise.
The Canterbury milk processor's revenue reached $600m, an increase of 43% on the $420m the previous year.
Synlait Milk chairman Graeme Milne said he is pleased with the result and the continued growth of the business in its sixth year of operation.
"Our focus during the year has been to deliver on the promises we made to shareholders when we listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange in 2013. Profitability was on target with our PFI, driven largely by a favourable product mix that enabled the business to make the most from the period of very high world market prices."
However, achieving targeted premiums and gross margin for specialised ingredients at a time when world market prices were high proved challenging.
Milne says along with the development of our nutritionals business being set back by regulatory change in the important Chinese market, it meant the profitability advantages over and above PFI we experienced in the first half of the year were largely eliminated.
"Over what has been a challenging year, the progress we have made with our key customers continues to give us confidence in our future. The ongoing execution of our growth initiatives to ensure the development of our infant formula and nutritionals business supports these customers is a key focus going forward," says Milne.
Synlait Milk's growth initiatives, including a 22,500m2 drystore expansion, lactoferrin extraction and purification plant and blending and consumer packaging plant were completed during the year.
Construction has begun on a new administration office and quality assurance laboratory, as well as a third large scale infant formula capable dryer, due to be completed in September 2015.
