The Rural Voice, 1998-04, Page 30segregated from the general pool of
milk, in much the same way the
organic milk producers were allowed
to segregate their milk from the pool.
Unlike a co-op, investors don't
have delivery rights to the
plant. "The way we've set it
up with the company not all the
investors will be shipping milk into
the plant and some producers who
are shipping milk into the plant won't
be investors," Schmidt says. "That's
one of the reasons we wanted the
company, to gain that flexibility. In
the early going we anticipate
requiring about 80,000 litres of milk
per month. That's only going to take
about four or five shippers initially.
We hope to double that by the end of
the first full year of production. It's
going to depend on how well we're
able to market these products."
By December, most of the
renovations were complete and since
then equipment became the main
task. Nearly all the equipment in the
plant is used, and it's been difficult to
find good quality used equipment,
Schmidt says. "There's a lot of used
equipment out there but most of it's
junk. It's hard to find equipment you
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want to bring into your plant."
By March 11 the equipment had
been installed, set up and tested.
Most of the start-up staff of four full-
time plant workers and two drivers
had also been hired, with some part-
time positions still to be filled. Three
members of the directors, Schmidt,
Tammy Sparling of Varna and Bill
Wallace of Seaforth are operating as
a general management team.
Products Ltd. at the end of February
bought out Pinnau's Dairy Products
of Cambridge, a small specialty dairy
company marketing products under
the "Sno White" label. The company
produces two types of Quark (a
product between a low-fat cream
cheese and a cottage cheese) as well
as plain natural yogurt and a 30 -per
cent milkfat sour cream. Production
of these products has been moved to
Seaforth where
the products will
continue to be
marketed under
the old label.
Though prod-
uction has started
at the new plant,
it will still be
some time before
the full line of
products is on
sale. "We'll add
Tammy Sparling (seen in the plant office) along with Bruce
Schmidt and Bill Wallace form a management team.
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our products one
at a time. We
want to get one
working, then add the next and the
next. How long it will take I don't
know," Schmidt says. "We don't
want to bite off too much at a time.
We hope to work through them fairly
quickly but that remains to be seen.
Things usually don't happen quite as
quickly as you think they should," he
says, recalling they'd originally
hoped to have the plant in operation
by late last November or early
December.
The plant began by making the
products it acquired through the
Pinnau purchase and will slowly
begin manufacturing the cheeses
once the plant is running smoothly.
First product produced will be
limburger cheese, followed by esrom
(a soft, white, mild cheese originally
made in Denmark), then baby gouda
and baby edam (both originally
Dutch cheeses) followed by several
lesser known specialty cheeses. One
of the frustrations is that they've had
customers wanting their product but
they weren't able to start production
before the final plant joint inspection
by Agriculture and Agri -food Canada
and Ontario Ministry of Agriculture,
Food and Rural Affairs. With the
distribution system acquired from the
Pinnau purchase, they already had a
ready market for their new products.
They hope to expand that base and