Westland Milk Products and its farmer suppliers were bracing for several days of disruption last week and the one before but the great work of road and rail contractors pleasantly surprised them.
“It was looking like being a few days before some roads and highways would be back up and running but pretty much it was all go again within 24 hours, which was good news,” Federated Farmers West Coast dairy chairman Stu Bland said.
Bland, who farms in the Grey Valley, said the biggest issue was access with a number of major road closures.
“The word was it would not be happening until Monday but most were open again by the end of Saturday so great job done to the contractors and to Westland who kept everyone well informed on what was going on.”
Further down in south Westland Graham Berry said 300mm of rain is a good dump but it’s nothing to get 500mm in 48 hours.
“It’s the joys of where we live here but we were quite lucky really with being on every day collection. We missed just the one day and had enough storage to carry that through.
“One more day and we would have been dumping milk.
“So, a big well done to roading crews and to the company (Westland), who got things back up and running very quickly.”
While access wasn’t an issue for West Coast sharemilkers’ Federated Farmers sharemilkers section chairman Andrew Stewart, farming near the headwaters of the Taramakau River, the storm left him with some flood protection maintenance work.
“We were a few hours late getting collected but once the rain stopped the water subsided pretty quickly.
“We do have some repair work to be done on our flood protection areas due to flooding in the headwaters of the river and we’re waiting on contractors to do that but that’s about the worst for us.”
Westland chief executive Tony Brendish said Westland Milk was back to business as usual within 24 hours.
“We are completely back to normal and have been since Saturday morning (November 17).
“We did not have to cease processing and were able to resolve collection, storage and product transport challenges through our contingency plans for such events.”
All access to cut-off farms was restored by Saturday morning or earlier.
Brendish said Westland has business continuity plans for such events and was quickly able to put them into place, which largely involved calling in extra road transport resources to use the alternative route over Lewis Pass to Canterbury.
“We are pleased to note that Kiwi Rail and the road transport people pulled out all the stops with rail through Arthurs Pass restored on Saturday night and the Arthurs Pass road now open also.”
The most immediate impacts for farmers were road closures preventing tankers getting to shareholders in south Westland, plus a few in the Lake Brunner and Lake Haupiri areas.
“Fortunately, the roading authorities were able to restore access comparatively quickly.”
Westland also had surface flooding at its Hokitika factory.
“This presented us with a lot of mopping up to do, however, production was unaffected and our staff responded diligently to have everything back to normal very quickly,” Brendish said.
