Fresh milk is now being exported to China

China has just accepted it’s first trial delivery of fresh milk as part of a new partnership with Norco. This is huge news for the Australian Dairy industry, as fresh milk is rapidly gaining popularity there and if Australia is not in the market early there was a great chance of other countries taking leadership.

To date delivery into China has been difficult due to the shelf life of the milk and the quarantine it went through. This has changed due to adjustments to the quarantine clearance process to allow for the shelf life to be extended to 21 days. The trial has allowed milk to reach homes in China within seven days. This now makes exporting into China viable for the first time.

Greg McNamara, Norco Chairman, said; “This opens the door for Norco to access the burgeoning demand from Chinese consumers for Australian fresh milk products. The pipeline has the capacity to deliver more than 20 million litres of fresh milk to consumers in China within the first 12 months of operation.”

Obviously to achieve the required shelf life, there needs to be very strict controls of temperature at all stages of the process and with this in place, a huge market is now open to Norco farmers and eventually to other producers.

Peter Verry, PGS (Peloris Global Sourcing Pty Ltd, one of the partners in the trial) Managing Director, said; “The cold chain pipeline solution incorporates stringent quality assurance controls that ensure the fresh milk meets or exceeds China’s food health and safety standards, that the product is maintained at the optimal temperature at all times during transit, and incorporates an innovative product security system that identifies and tracks the location of individual units.”

It has taken 12 months of intense negotiation and process adjustments to reach this historic point. The first delivery was just 1000 litres in March 2014.

Written by Rachelle Williams – the Green Food Safety Coach