66 | “Our hamburgers are also assessed by McDonalds against world-class standards and always rate very highly.” ANZCO Foods Waitara Backing the quick service food sector T Richard Loader The plant’s reputation for manufacturing high quality foods has established itself as the sole supplier of McDonalds’ chain of fast food restaurants throughout New Zealand and the Pacific Islands PRODUCTION Who doesn’t love a McDonalds’ burger, and you can go to any McDonalds Restaurant anywhere in New Zealand and know that the delicious mouthwatering beef pattie has come from ANZCO Foods Waitara, Taranaki. ANZCO Foods has been operating from the Waitara plant since 2004 when it added two new processing plants to existing Coldstorage facilities that were on site. ANZCO had already been using Waitara’s coldstores for meat processed at its Eltham site about 54 minutes away and it made sense to set up a purpose built processing facility. While one of the new processing plants was established to manufacture patties for the quick service restaurant sector and is known as ANZCO Prepared Foods, the other plant is known as ANZCO Gourmet Foods and was originally set up to manufacture salami, jerky, sausages and other small goods. Over the years the plant’s reputation for manufacturing high quality foods has established itself as the sole supplier of McDonalds’ chain of fast food restaurants throughout New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, as well as supplying products on request to McDonalds in Indonesia, Vietnam and South Korea. While no longer manufacturing salami and sausages, the Gourmet plant supplies unbranded jerky products to two very big US based customers — Old Trapper, one of the fastest growing jerky companies in the US, and Costco. “We mainly manufacture only one flavour for Old Trapper, which is teriyaki,” says Site Manager Jacques Jordaan. “We ship the product in bulk to Old Trapper in Oregon where they further process it and put it into retail packaging for the US consumer market,” he says. “Recently we also started manufacturing a sugar free jerky for Old Trapper. For Costco we supply jerky to Japan, Australia, the UK and France. The main customer for our raw mince and diced products is Heinz Watties in New Zealand.” Each year the Waitara plant manufactures 1200 tonnes of jerky, 1000 tonnes of raw minced and diced product, and 7500 tonnes of patties or 600,000 a patties a day. The meat that goes into the high quality products manufactured at Waitara primarily comes from ANZCO’s processing plant in Eltham and Silver Fern Farms in Hawera. “For our hamburgers we use all beef trims that have come off the carcass during processing. “There’s a strict recipe we use to develop the patties for McDonalds, which cannot have more than 24.7% fat content. “For the jerky we use prime topside beef with the fat trimmed off. “We use beef and lamb trims for the mince and diced products.” Placing the utmost importance on food quality and safety, ANZCO Foods’ Waitara is BRC (British Retail Consortium) Accredited with an AA+ rating, the highest possible. Jacques explains that the ‘plus’ means the BRC auditor arrived at the plant unannounced to assess the food safety standards. “We hold ourselves to very high standards and our hamburgers are also assessed by McDonalds against world-class standards and always rate very highly. Old Trapper, Costco and Heinz Watties also expect very high standards.” Employing a team of 200, of which 155 are employed directly in processing, ANZCO Foods is the largest employer in Waitara township and one of the largest in the region. “About 90% of our team live in Waitara or nearby, with some coming from New Plymouth,” says Jacques. “While some of our processing tasks are very manual, we expect our new employees to be fit for work, have literacy skills so they can follow instructions, and want to do a great job providing a high quality product to our customers. “We also provide opportunities for people to upskill themselves and have career paths where people can move into leading hand and supervisory roles that require greater computer and people management skills.” Very much an active participant in the community in which it operates, ANZCO Foods enjoys providing donations of its delicious product to schools for fundraisers, and to food banks. “We also sponsor dictionaries for local year five students as part of a Rotary Club school programme.” Bridge Street, Eltham • Phone (06) 764 8205 • www.uhlenbergs.co.nz · Refrigerated Freight · Container Handling · Swing Lifters · Rural Carriers · Dangerous Goods · Tankers · Air strip cartage · Grader · Lime fines · Flat decks · Metal supplies · Bottom dumpers · Machine transporter
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