Analysis

Building the world’s best nutritional business is the ambitious goal that New Zealand dairy company Mataura Valley Milk set out to achieve in August 2016. Now the company’s milk production plant is an impressive accomplishment that comfortably justifies its early ambition. Mataura Valley Milk is now benchmarking innovation and performance for other milk plants. Situated north of Gore at the bottom of the South Island, the state-of-the-art facility was delivered on-time and within budget, an impressive achievement for a greenfield project. “To achieve our goal, we knew that choosing only the best people, partners, and infrastructure was crucial,” says Brent Robinson, Mataura Valley Milk’s Projects Manager. “The success of the project was a consequence of meticulous planning and strategy. We sought out and hired the most skilled staff; we chose construction partners with proven expertise; we purchased best-in-class plant and equipment; and we partnered with industry-leading suppliers and fabricators.” Schneider Electric was one such expert partner that delivered its EcoStruxure solution, tailored to Mataura Valley Milk’s strict requirements for a fully connected and integrated facility with real-time visibility of every process. Connectivity At Mataura Valley Milk’s core is its dedication to customers. “We must have agility around what we produce with no sacrifice of quality. Producing nutritional products is a complex, high reward approach so the plant must be nimble and our expertise unmatched. To confidently make these decisions, visibility and trust in our data is crucial” says Robinson. Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Plant solution delivers and provides context to live, real-time data on every process at the plant through AVEVA’s System Platform, Batch Management and Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software. In short, Mataura Valley employees receive any data they require immediately and know they can trust it. Goal Mataura Valley Milk wanted to build a business that could quickly tailor production […]

An international virtual conference that focuses on cultivating a shift towards more sustainable and ethical grazing systems will involve presentations from experts all over the world. Hosted by Lincoln University, the series includes six weekly online workshops, to take place between 31 May and 5 July 2021. Livestock Production Professor Pablo Gregorini says the event is not to be missed, as no other scientific convention in the world offers such breadth of topic coverage. “We’re aiming to influence future theoretical and practical models of pastoralism with a series of talks from a wide range of experts. Participants will be exposed to cutting-edge thinking and practice, with an international audience of scientists, academics, postgraduate students and policymakers, as well as farmers from around the world.” Discussions will centre on re-imagining models of pastoralism by referring to what Prof Gregorini refers to as “grazing in future multiscapes”. The “multiscapes” include thoughtscapes (ways of thinking), landscapes (environments including soil, water and air), foodscapes (dietary perceptions and health), socialscapes (societal demands), and wildscapes (issues relating to interactions between agriculture and wildlife). Keynote speakers will cover subjects as diverse as system thinking, rangeland, grasslands, grazing management, ecology, indigenous development, agroecology, environmental ethics and sustainability, economic sociology, natural resources management, and landscape design. Prof Gregorini is Head of Lincoln University’s Centre of Excellence: Designing Future Productive Landscapes, director of the Lincoln University Pastoral Livestock Production Lab and Chair of the International Scientific Committee for the Nutrition of Herbivores. These organisations all seek to explore and re-imagine future agricultural and pastoral industries while considering the sociological and cultural context for an evolving world.