MPI Opens $3m Greenhouse Gas Research Funding Round
The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has announced has opened applications for the 2026/27 funding round of the Greenhouse Gas Inventory Research (GHGIR) fund.
Synlait Milk has received MPI approval of its risk management programme at its dry blending and consumer packaging plant.
The approval enables Synlait Milk to now pack and export retail-ready product from its manufacturing site, having met the New Zealand food safety requirements of the Animal Products Act 1999.
The only exception is for exports of finished infant formula to China. Documentation required to support Synlait Milk's application for registration as an exporter of finished infant formula to China was sent to the Chinese regulatory body today by MPI.
Synlait managing director John Penno says it's a major milestone towards meeting customer demand for total product integrity from grass to glass.
"Today is an important day for our business. We now have an integrated facility on one site that gives us full manufacturing control and delivers on the needs of consumers looking for nutritious and safe food," says Penno.
"The packaging plant provides further support for our value added strategy of supplying high quality finished infant formula and nutritional products to our customers.
"We look forward with confidence to working with authorities in New Zealand and China to achieve registration as soon as possible."
The sophisticated packaging plant was built in nine months at a cost of $28.5 million and is the only one of its kind in the South Island, New Zealand. It has a processing capacity of 30,000 metric tonnes per annum, or around 33 million 900 gram cans of powder.
New Zealand dairy farmers are set to be the first in the world to receive access to a new digital physical milk pricing tool that enables them to fix the price for their physical milk.
State farmer Pāmu is opening its farm gates this summer in an effort to give the rural sector the opportunity to see how large-scale, multi-system farming is delivering productivity and profitability across New Zealand.
A five-year study has found that the cost of reducing emissions without technology may be significant and unsustainable for Northland dairy farmers.
DairyNZ says Waikato farmers need certainty on Plan Change 1, but they say that certainty must be matched with practical, workable rules and a clear transition that doesn't get ahead of the new resource management system currently under review.
While the Government has moved quickly to make commercial hauliers' lot easier during the current fuel crisis, they appear to be stuck in the creep box when it comes to the agricultural industry.
Waikato farmers have been told that the Government’s new planning system legislation and the region’s Plan Change 1 (PC1) “won’t mesh together very well”.

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