Fonterra Opens New Zealand's Largest Cool Store

Fonterra expects to ship more than 235,000 metric tonnes of butter and cheese per year from its new Crawford Street Cool Store in Hamilton, which was officially opened today.

Sep 10 2010 --- Fonterra Managing Director Trade and Operations Gary Romano says the new cool store, New Zealand’s largest, marks a big step forward in the Waikato and in Fonterra’s drive to get the most efficient link between its farmer shareholders and global customers.

“This cool store is the central point for all butter and cheese made in the Waikato – the final stop before it’s packed into containers and railed directly to the port. That’s over 235 million retail-sized blocks of Mainland cheese or around 500 million standard packs of Anchor butter,” says Mr Romano.

“Butter and cheese which was stored in third party stores around the region is now streamlined into one logistics operation. This allows us to improve efficiencies in the areas of product storage, transportation and handlings and marks a strong vote of confidence in Waikato dairying, which represents about a third of Fonterra’s milk supply.”

The Cool Store has been built alongside a 48,000MT dry store, which opened in 2005, and together they form a hub for Fonterra’s product from the Waikato and Bay of Plenty regions. The hub is integrated with the KiwiRail network which removes 65,000 truck movements per year from local roads and reduces Fonterra’s carbon footprint for transport, says Mr Romano.

Another hub is planned in Mosgiel near Dunedin with a 45,000MT dry store and 17,000MT cool store. “This is all part of the Co-operative’s national supply chain strategy, which will see the development of five hubs coupled with the move to use rail more often. We anticipate this national strategy will simplify our supply chain, improve customer delivery performance and deliver savings.”

Mr Romano says this progress is crucial to give the Co-operative, and the dairy industry, a competitive edge as a low-cost producer of high quality dairy products in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. The hub approach presents a real opportunity for increased cooperation and partnership between dairy and other agricultural industries, says Mr Romano. “We all have the same storage needs and if we cooperate we can drive our competitive edge by maximising efficiency through greater economies of scale.

“As an export sector we’re all a long distance from our markets, it’s essential that we continually improve our efficiency, particularly in our operations and supply chain to remain a step ahead and ensure that New Zealand agriculture is sustainable in the long term.”

Crawford Street Cool Store Facts
• 230m long and 87m wide.
• Took 12 months to build with more than 550 workers putting 140,000 hours of work in.
• Temperature range is between -18 to 13 degrees Celsius.
• Automated robots with sophisticated technology which makes product handling safer and more efficient – they can stack cheese up to 11m high and butter 27 pallets deep.
• Forklifts have cameras mounted which help position product safely when raised above 4.5m.
• Seven loading docks help transfer large amounts of product quickly to waiting containers.
• To ensure safety, the Cool Store has fire resistant wall panels and a ‘dry pipe’ sprinkler system capable of pumping more than 9000 litres of water per minute.