| 81 RURAL SERVICES » Pure Oil NZ / Bealey Farm Johno and Tania have eyes on the prize Sue Russell Johno and Tania Burrows, operate Alpine Dairies, their dairy farming business through which they are making significant steps toward their vision of farm ownership when opportunity presents in years to come. Currently they are 50:50 sharemilking at Bealey Farm at Kirwee, some 40km west of Christchurch. They moved to the property in June this year, after seeing an advertisement for a 50:50 position advertised on Farm Source. “These days it’s not easy to get a 50:50 sharemilking contract and I understand there were a huge number of responses to the advertisement, so we feel very pleased to have secured the contract,” Johno says. The farm extends 211ha under irrigation and is home to a herd of 720 predominantly Friesian cows at peak milking. Johno says he’s spending the first season on the farm settling into its full situation but adds that all the major infrastructure is in good condition. “When you move on to a new farm you need to give it time to show you its own character and where the potentials for you to mark your stamp on it are.” When Rural South caught up with Johno early July, the herd had dried off, however calving wasn’t far away, due to start in the next couple of weeks with a nine week calving window in place. Johno says a goal of 500kg/MS/cow has been set so is expecting around 360,000kg all up. “The milking shed is a very basic 40 aside herringbone which is more than adequate for the herd. We have Allflex collars on the herd which takes care of automatic drafting. This will be the herd’s third year on the collars and they’ve been a good investment.” Working with Johno on the day-to-day is a team of three. A young farm worker will be encouraged to take on additional responsibilities as a junior manager. “We have a 2IC who came through with me from our previous farm, so having a junior manager makes sense longer term, to build in some depth of experience and responsibility.” Assisting Johno and Tania to form a business model that would meet their long term needs, the couple undertook a DairyNZ Mark & Measure programme, to help them gain the tools to measure their business achievements to date and develop a strategy to realise their ultimate goals. “We’ve had some ups and downs like all farmers do but the programme certainly gave us a foundation to look back on.” The business is very much run as a joint effort, enabling the couple to bring their individual strengths into the business plan, while each has interests outside the farm gate. Tania, works from time to time with Dairy training and Johno takes on AI work as a qualified AI technician. He has also very recently become SharemilkerChair of North Canterbury Federated Farmers, a role he is enjoying. Bealey Farm is an unusual configuration, more like two squares meeting at the point and there is a Looking to increase capacity Rapeseed harvest in South Canterbury, 2023. Hugh de Lacy With 13 years of seed oil production behind it, Pure Oil New Zealand is reaching capacity at its expansive complex in Rolleston, south of Christchurch, and it’s looking to develop it further over the next couple of years. The company makes a range of food oils and protein stock-feeds from the output of about 90 arable farmers scattered throughout the South Island, and it’s fast approaching its capacity even working round the clock seven days a week. Rapeseed, olive and sunflower oils are the core products Pure Oil NZ turns out, and it markets them under various labels to both retail and wholesale users. From an output of 2000MT of rape-seed oil in its start-up year of 2012, the company has since hiked production to 8000MT from 20,000MT of seed. It got into the sunflower oil market after the war in Ukraine upset supplies from there, and today its farmer suppliers have 750ha under production. Another product is soya bean oil of which Pure Oil had 140ha growing last year, though output grew in the 2024 harvest primarily through increased yields. “We’re making further progress with the soya bean market, and we’re looking now into the R&D needed to hike our capacity to process more,” Pure Oil owner and Managing Director Nick Murney says. “We’ve also got a full-circle supply of high oleic rapeseed oil to restaurants for their frying needs under our boxed Superfry label, and we’re now collecting the used cooking oil on a business-tobusiness basis and using it to power our grain driers and generators. “We’re just 18 months into that market, and it looks promising.” Cold-pressed olive oil and sunflower oil are also a growing sector following a sharp increase in price driven by shortages. “The Good Oil sales there have increased a lot and we’ve had a big rise in repeats,” he says. Nick saw an opportunity to get into the seed-oil business when state-owned coal-miner Solid Energy was shut down, leaving its completed but unused bio-diesel plant in Rolleston without a future. ® INTERNATIONAL | COASTAL | WAREHOUSING | CUSTOMS BROKERAGE 100% NZ OWNED FREIGHT FORWARDING EXPERTS 0800 242 674 www.championfreight.co.nz Auckland | Christchurch | Dunedin The machinery was all in place, and all it needed was product to process and markets. It enabled Nick to establish an environmentfriendly zero-waste business model, with the crushing plant powered by hydro-electricity, the food-miles kept to a minimum, paddock-to- warehouse traceability and tight restraints on the use of plastic in packaging. An important connection between the company and its farmer supplies are the full-time agronomists stationed in the arable farming districts reasonable walk from the very back for the herd to come into the shed. Johno says that since leaving school he’s been on the land and carries a real passion for the industry. He sees dairy farming as a wonderful career for those engaged in working hard to secure their own future, as there are so many options and business structures to farm through. “Both Tania and I feel we’re at the right place at the right time here and intend to be here some years to really achieve the goals we’ve set for this stage in our farming journey.” of Mid-Canterbury and South Canterbury, and, most recently, in Southland. Pure Oil NZ has a staff of 35 but it’s in the market for more, especially machinery operators and sales and marketing people, and last year it finished building a 1500m2 combined warehouse, office and storage building to house them. “We’ve come a long way in our 13 years from a factory without supply, customers or brands, and we put that down to having the right business values, attracting and hiring good people, and looking after them,” Nick says. 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