It has been a busy first half of the year for the DCS team with three Fieldays events attended. We started off down in Gore with the team from Jack Refrigeration which went very well with good attendance from farmers who seemed to be well aware of the new cooling regulations. It was apparent that there was a need for reliable, high quality and energy saving cooling systems. The Packo ice bank attracted a lot of attention and many were surprised how cold 0°C ice water actually is and why it is such a simple but reliable method to cool milk.
We followed up the success in Gore with Northland Fieldays in Dargaville. The glorious sun was out and again there were plenty of farmers out to look at milk cooling options. The warmer water temperatures in the North certainly made a strong case for better precooling of milk prior to putting it into the milk vat.
Finally we ended up in a rather wet Fielding for the Central districts chapter. There were fewer farmers out and about, we felt but that may have been due to the run of successive drops in the global dairy auctions. It is certainly tough out there for many farmers and we do feel helpless while we all wait for the prices to recover. At the time of writing we have had a small rise in the prices for WMP but only time will tell if that is a sustainable trend.
Planning is now well underway for the main event for the year at Mystery Creek in June. We are looking forward to having Steven Gunst, the Packo Milk Cooling Division Business unit manager here from Belgium. DCS have a stand right in the heart of the new Dairy Pavilion and look forward to showcasing technology from our partners Packo, Carel and Bitzer. We will have information for farmers on a variety of solutions for the cooling and storage of milk as well as the monitoring, logging and alarming of milk whilst it is waiting to be collected by a tanker.
I hope by the time our post mortem of national Fieldays comes around our dairy prices will be well on the road to recovery so our industry can get back to doing what it does best, producing world class food for export.
Come by and see us at the National Field days, you’ll find us in the Dairy Pavilion, stand# J22.
Suyash Baichoo, Dairy Cooling Solutions.
Visit our Field days page here for more information, images and videos.
