Business South March 2021

| 31 DAIRY INDUSTRY Westland Milk Products Richard Hickson: “Yili’s purchase has also provided security and investment to Westland to help us evolve our product mix and upgrade our assets to meet market demands.” Innovative vat solutions With over 70 years experience in the fab- rication of stainless steel vats for the dairy industry, DTS now has the honour of being responsible for the production of 95% of the country’s milk vats. Officially branded as DTS Ltd almost two years ago, the company reached anoth- er milestone shortly thereafter with the decision to leverage on its engineering capabilities and diversify into other areas of stainless steel fabrication for the food industry. “Recently we’ve been involved in a number of exciting projects that includes horizontal milk vats, yoghurt vats, apple pulp vats, and chocolate melters, along with a number of other projects” says CEO Gavin Thwaites. “We have the capability to design and build almost anything our customers require. There is a huge amount of interest coming from the primary industry and the food manufacturing sector. “We have a reputation of listening to our customers and coming up with innovative and cost-effective solutions.” While DTS’s manufacturing plant is located in Taranaki, its service and technology office is based in Hamilton. “We provide products and services throughout the country and because of that we have a nationwide team of refrig- eration and milk quality experts and a 24/7 Customer Services team to support our customers. “Our technology team is responsible for our suite of farm monitoring software, which includes milk, effluent, water, silo, weather and farm asset tracking. “We also design and manufacture animal drafting gates, dairy automation solu- tions, and herd management software. The world is changing and New Zealand’s agri-sector is needing to embrace smart technology in order to make better on- farm decisions. “DTS is listening and has positioned our- selves to provide innovative services that deliver tangible differences to our custom- ers. We adopt a Partnership approach with our customer in the centre of every decision we make. ” Underpinning DTS’s culture is one of its core values: ‘to make a big difference for our customers’. “We encourage our whole team to report back on what our customers are telling us in regard to the agri-business area. We have regular weekly meetings that every- one attends. This approach really puts our customer at the heart of our business. We don’t decide what our customers want — they tell us what they need.” 0800 500 387 www.dts.co.nz WE’RE A BIG DEAL IN HOLDING TANKS Even bigger, within the dairy industry alone, we supply 95% of New Zealand’s milk vats. Bigger still, for over 50 years we’ve designed, manufactured and installed food grade tanks at competitive prices in New Zealand and overseas. So if your next project is a big deal (or even a small one), talk to us today. How big? 29,000L to be exact.