It had a capacity of three billion slices annually.
During the past year two new processing lines were built, one for slice-on-slice cheese for fast food outlets and the other individually wrapped cheese slices for retail sales packs.
Fonterra global operations managing director Robert Spurway said the sliced cheese plant would use 3.5 tonnes of block cheese every hour, adding considerable value to farmers’ milk.
Sliced cheese was one of the fastest growing dairy segments, driven by demand for hamburgers in Australasia, Asia and the Middle East.
It was a cornerstone of Fonterra’s plans to treble food service sales from $1.5 billion annually to $5b in 2023, at which time it would consume 17% of the total pool.
That would require a compounded annual growth rate of 17% sustained over six years.
Global food service director Grant Weston said the plant opening was the culmination of a massive capacity increase that included the Waitoa UHT plant, Te Rapa cream cheese and Clandeboye mozzarella cheese.
“As tastes become more westernised, particularly in Asia, we are seeing a big increase for ingredients to make products such as burgers, pizza and pasta.
“Globally, food service is growing at 6% annually and expansions such as this one at Eltham help us to capitalise on that growth,” Watson said.
In China Fonterra had market shares between 40% and 80%, depending on the product category, and half of all pizzas in China had Fonterra cheese on top and more than half of the leading bakery chains used Fonterra dairy products.
Spurway said there were 350 different product specifications for the Eltham sliced cheese plant and it would produce to very exacting standards.
The Bridge St, Eltham, plant also produced blue mould and yellow cheeses for Fonterra brands Mainland, Kapiti, Galaxy and Ferndale.
