this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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Te Wai Pounamu / South Island
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I'm not worried about oat milk instead of cow milk (that would be great), I'm worried about oat milk production on top of cow milk production.
There is a port at bluff. It handles significantly lower volumes than Christchurch and this may be a concern if they want to be world leading at oat milk.
It would use a lot less fuel to transport the oats than to transport the oat milk, if they still had to go to Christchurch.
It would be interesting to know what led to the decision. They originally planned the factory for Southland, so must not have been concerned about it at the start. I wonder if they came across political problems with councils or consent or something and decided it was too hard and to try somewhere else.
In Southland, there are some areas in production now, but the idea was to do conversions of dairy as the industry grows.
Southland needs more income - growing the port would help achieve that?
Not if it is transported OS. And if it goes in my coffee it has to come back again as oat milk :(
If I hear the reasoning, I'll post back here.
That would be great. Thinking about it, dairy and oat growing land probably share a lot in common so it makes sense to do that conversion.
This is the politics bit. The company wanting to set up an oat milk factory would look at what they need. They would approach the port to ask about this, the port would approach the council about expanding, the council may approach central government about support. Talks go round and round, but if they are going nowhere then they may end up going to a backup option like building the plant in Canterbury. It's hard to know what made them change their mind, though if you're local there may be rumours.
The cost of shipping from Christchurch to Europe instead of Bluff to Europe is probably minimally different, but the cost of trucking from Southland to Christchurch port vs Canterbury to Christchurch port may well be a big difference (remembering one truck can take a tiny fraction of what a ship can, and each truck needs a driver, and each driver needs breaks if the trip is long). The shipping cost per litre may well be less than the cost to ship it to the other side of the world.
That would be great, I'd be interested to know.
A detailed background story from 2021 for anyone interested.