NZ Dairy Summer 2020

72 | nz dairy www.maclon.co.nz Maclon is pleased to support Moa Milking & Pumping Ltd and proud to be a supplier of high quality water reticulation products. www.precisede.co.nz Allan 021 909 463 Brian 027 492 4046 For EVERYTHING and ANYTHING Dairy Effluent Proudly supporting MoaMilking & Pumping Ltd. Vortex Bladders for Dairy Effluent &Water • Specialising in dairy e luent disposal design • Collaborate with local dealers for installation & servicing • Taranaki based, 10 years Taranaki Regional Council experience • Independent Consultant Samantha Bull - Your local dairy e luent accredited consultant 027 722 5552 samantha.bull@agenviro.co.nz Is your dairy e luent consent renewal due soon? Does your e luent system need to be upgraded? DAIRY SERVICES » Moa Milking & Pumping B ack in 2005 when Moa Milking and Pumping Ltd began, it was just Nathan Hitchcock and his wife Tania. Based in Inglewood in Taranaki they had the local dealership for Waikato Milk- ing Systems and their aim was to provide a good service for local farmers servicing and repairing milking and pumping equipment. While home base is still Taranaki things have evolved since then and they now have 25 staff split between Inglewood and the Waikato. “We have a team up in Waikato,” says Na- than, “and all they do is service and install rotary platforms, plus I’ve got guys in Taranaki that service the lower half of the North Island for the same thing. We’ve set up a separate company called Moa Rotary Platforms for that side of the business.” In 2012 with their core business of servicing and repairing water pumps and milking equipment well under control locally the decision to expand with the business of installing rotary platforms made good sense. They concentrated on Taranaki to start with but after a couple of years, in a joint decision with Wai- kato Milking Systems, they agreed that they could cover the whole of the North Island. “They were doing their own installs for a while there,” explains Nathan. “So we ended up purchas- ing all the equipment off them and we pretty much took over from what they were doing.” In more recent times, with increasing compli- ance requirements on dairy farmers, effluent has become a huge part of their business. “Ten years ago pretty much every farm in Taranaki had settling ponds,” explains Nathan. “But within the next ten years everyone will have moved away from that to effluent and spray irrigation, or at least that’s where it’s heading.” Moa Milking and Pumping Ltd offers turnkey sys- tems. “We offer solutions from start to finish,” says Nathan. “So when the farmers need a new consent from the Regional Council, which they won’t get with oxidation ponds, we can take care of it from design through to install. Even a simple system on a small dairy farm of 200 to 300 cows could cost around fifty thousand, so that’s where we come in to come up with a system and a budget that the farmers can work with.” Effluent, milk coolers growth areas Virginia Wright The other growth stream, also a compliance issue being tackled now to bring New Zealand up to global standards, is to do with milk cooling. Taranaki is one of the last regions to become part of Fonterra’s country wide Milk Vat Monitoring programme (MVM). MVM monitors the milk tem- perature at the inlet to the vat and Moa Milking and Pumping provide solutions where that temperature is higher than it should be. “Fonterra knows what the temperature is when it comes in as well as in the vat itself. We all know that milk’s best cold and lasts better when it’s cold so now it’s being measured. Given that we’re work- ing to sell our milk on the world stage it’s probably a good thing,” says Nathan. Regardless of what the job is that they’re doing, Nathan’s clear about their approach to it. “It’s gone better than I thought since we started in 2005, and there’s probably still plenty of growth out there, but the main thing for us is that we just try to do an honest job and look after people.” Trenching work in preparation for laying pipe on a Taranaki Farm.