The official Journal of The new zealand insTiTuTe of food science ...

Dairyto pay the price of creating marketing and research and developmentdepartments for themselves. These attitudes have engenderedpride in the company and the district. Company staffgenuinely want to do well for Hokitika and the West Coast.On the road to Hokitika I saw lots of camper vans and somedrivers displayed dodgy driving skills. I asked Doug how thetanker drivers got on with camper vans. “Pretty well, but sometimestheir comments are not printable”. So I wondered aloudwhat camper van drivers might have to say about tanker drivers.“Oh,” said Doug with a grin “some of their replies would beunprintable too; but for different reasons”.Bringing in the milkTransport Manager, Doug Cochrane, an employee of some 30years service, knows the Coast well and punctuates his story withlots of numbers. There is just one dairy factory on the West Coastand Doug’s fleet of 20 Scania milk tankers collects milk from250km to the north (geographically north of Wellington) near thestart of the Heaphy Track and 150 km south to the Fox Glacier.The 57 drivers travel four million kilometres per season, collecting500 million litres of milk from 383 farms which have a totalof some 140,000 cows. Doug spoke highly of both the Scania rigsand the trailer units that are made by NDA in Hamilton.R&D the Hokitika wayWestland’s modern R&D facility has good facilities and a staff ofseven; of whom five have PhDs. They are involved with newproduct development, especially in nutritional and value-addedproducts, and the functional properties of powders. I was ableto talk to some NZIFST members there.Kate Arnold has been at Westland for four years. Originally fromthe UK, she qualified there in biology then did a PhD in immunology.Later, she spent five years researching at the schoolof medicine in Christchurch. When I asked her how she got tothe West Coast, Kate gave a delightfully brief and honest answer“I met a boy”. She was very pleased to have found such agood job in Hokitika and is right into her mountain biking and‘other outdoor stuff’. “Our role is in new product development,February/March 201017