“Fonterra’s intentions with A2 are effectively an endorsement by such a global dairy company and put an end to the long arguments,” he said.
Synlait is the largest A2 milk processor in New Zealand, mainly for A2 Platinum infant formula for sale in New Zealand, Australia and China.
That brand is the flagship of a2 Milk, also an 8% Synlait shareholder.
Penno and his milk supply manager David Williams said the 60 A2 milk farmers out of its supplier base of 200 farms have mostly achieved conversion by testing cows on two or more farms under common ownership and moving the confirmed A2 ones into one herd on one farm.
Synlait decided early on that suppliers could not put A1 and A2 herds through the same dairy parlour and that logical restriction has been endorsed by the farmers.
“Farmers prefer that A2 cows only are kept on the one farm, being reduced risk (of A1 contamination) that they have to worry about,” Williams said.
The trend towards Kiwicross cattle, with a component of naturally A2 Jersey, is helping the national conversion rate.
A number of farmers have been breeding towards A2 for many years because the information and the means were available, Penno said.
Those with two or more herds chose to use only A2 bulls and test the replacement heifers, drafting them into A2-only or mixed A1/A2 herds.
A further refinement of breeding policy was to DNA test all cows and preferentially mate those with the A2A2 genotype to A2 bulls.
Synlait had encouraged and assisted farmers, though Penno would not disclose any financial details.
“Because breeding takes a long time we have to project a long way into the future for any of the special milk programmes we have.
“Consistency in those milk programmes is important because the quicker you try to do something the more expensive it is for the farmers.”
Synlait had built the Dunsandel plant to keep milk streams separate and the processes verifiable and it will be more complicated to retrospectively amend a plant, he said.
Even with a factory designed for the purpose, amendments and retrofitting had been required.
A complete supply chain approach was required to keep different milk streams separate and Synlait had made some expensive mistakes in the past.
“A1 contamination in A2 infant formula would create huge wastage,” Penno said.
