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In the warm, humid and very clean production room of the King Island UHT
milk processing plant, brick-sized cartons of long-life milk travel by
conveyor belt from packaging to storage.
 For
a quality product from King Island you might wonder why you’ve never
seen the UHT milk on your supermarket shelves. The branding on the old
packaging was restrained for legal reasons, unable to promote its King
Island pedigree. The carton was recently re-designed by a New
Zealand–based firm and displays an idealised black and white image of
the Cape Wickham lighthouse. And the ‘King Island’ connection is now in
a large bold font, thanks to the efforts of a skilled lawyer who sits on
the company’s new consortium of directors.
The UHT milk
processing plant was originally established by King Island Milk Pty
Ltd in mid-2002, and was partially funded by a $457,828 grant from
the Tasmanian Government’s post-regulation Dairy Regional Assistance
Program (Dairy RAP).
The new owners, comprising of local and Melbourne-based
farmers/businesses, bought the plant after it went into receivership
with debts of around $10 million in September 2003.
After around a year hiatus, production started again in late 2004. Along
with the re-packaged UHT milk, the plant also produces the extremely
rich, sweet-tasting and comically packaged Chug-a-lug flavoured
milkshake.
 “Currently
it’s a small production,” says Production Manager Dale Pogue, who with
came to the island in early-2005 with Factory Manager Rodney and
Administrator Teresa Many of the original staff members have also been
employed. “Hopefully we’ll build up to five days (per week) production.”
As an excellent example of careful use of the
Island’s finite resources, the factory is also packaging the skim milk
left from the King Island Dairy’s cream production.
Jackie Cooper
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