FoodWaikato plant expansion a boost for innovation

NZ Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce has opened the $5m expansion of Waikato Innovation Park’s FoodWaikato plant.

The first stage of the plant, a NZ$12.8m spray dryer facility, was opened in May 2012. The second stage allows specialty ingredients such as vitamins, minerals and oils to be wet blended with milk or fruit juice prior to being spray dried in the facility.

“Higher value products like infant formula and aged care formula tend to involve mixtures of ingredients, but mixing off-site and transporting to FoodWaikato created regulatory, product integrity and processing challenges,” said Waikato Innovation Park Chief Executive Stuart Gordon.

“So we have added ‘wetside’ processing capability that now allows the mixing process to be done on-site, meaning FoodWaikato can now provide a greater level of development and innovation capability to dairy companies — cow, goat and sheep — as well as fruit and vegetable producers.

“We’re moving from helping our customers manufacture ingredients that sell for around US$4700 per tonne to US$25,000 per tonne.  At full capacity, we will produce around 2500 tonnes of new, value-added products each year.

“There’s no other open access facility of its kind in Australasia where companies can manufacture smaller runs of their first commercial batch of a new product,” said Gordon.

“The only option for them is to build their own plant, which is cost-prohibitive for most companies — especially new market entrants. FoodWaikato offers a unique solution to eliminate this major innovation barrier.”

The expansion is expected to inject an extra NZ$38.5m per year in export revenue back into the New Zealand economy. Future plans for plant management include investigation into additional processing solutions for vegetable and fruit high-value markets.