Haere Ra 2025: Te Tai Tokerau, Northland
Peter Jones is Director at The Landing and past chair of Northland Winegrowers, with Kim Gilkinson, of Dancing Petrel, now in that role. He casts an eye on the highs and lows of the year.
All new dairy conversions must immediately meet new MPI standards for cooling milk, and all existing farms must upgrade to the new standards by June 1, 2018.
Dairy News caught up with Jones on a 340ha Townshend Group dairy farm south of Ashburton, where contract milker Rhys Huddleston runs 1500 cows. The farm supplies Synlait with certified grass-fed milk.
Jones’ company, Roza Services, of Wigram, is installing a large snap-cooling plant on the farm, using a 30,000L insulated water tank. With the water in the tank brought down to 5oC between milkings it will then act as a large heat sink to snap-cool the raw milk, so it will already be at about 66.5oC as it enters the vats.
The refrigeration unit will also harvest the waste heat to heat the shed’s water.
Jones says the new regulations are only attainable with such systems; older style direct cooling cannot cool raw milk quickly enough.
Although existing farms still have the best part of two years to meet the new regulations, Jones says they will need to move quickly.
“At the last moment it will be too late.”
Roza Services builds custom plants but also has stock units ready to install. Using only European machinery, Roza can supply new or reconditioned equipment “to suit every budget”.
The costs range from $10,000 or $15,000 up to $50,000, depending on capacity, and Jones acknowledges farmers are struggling with low milk prices.
“Farmers are slow at the moment because basically they don’t want to spend money because they don’t have it. So they have to do something about it. I’ve got one farmer who’s got five farms – 6000 cows. He’s going to need these systems but he cannot afford them at the moment.”
Roza Services also supplies solar hot water systems, heat pumps, refrigeration and freezer plants for farm, commercial and residential use.
