Mungalli Creek Dairy to launch new ice cream range
A new range of dairy products will land on Far North supermarket shelves when an expanded processing plant fires up on the Tablelands.
Cairns
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NEW tropical-inspired organic ice cream is expected to hit Far Northern supermarket shelves as a new increased capacity processing plant on the Atherton Tablelands comes online.
The Mungalli Creek Dairy plant at Millaa Millaa is also expected to double milk production and employ 20 additional staff.
Using cutting edge technology, solar panels will be used to chill large volumes of water which will act as a “water battery” to be pumped around the plant to keep stored products cold.
Mungalli marketing manager Michelle Bell-Turner said for the moment the focus was on marketing the new product range locally and on the Australian east coast.
“(However) we are close to Asian export markets so there is an opportunity there and this new facility does give us that opportunity,” she said.
“If we were to look at anything we would look at Japan and Singapore to start with.”
A $10 million regional export hub slated for completion at the Cairns Airport in 2021 was expected to assist in tapping lucrative Asian markets, Bell-Turner said.
Brand development and tasting of the new tropical-inspired ice cream line is underway and expected to hit the shelves early next year.
“We are working on packaging as we speak. We are going to use local where we can including vanilla from Broken Nose and local banana, mango and passion fruit” she said.
“Our ice-cream will be full fat and made with whole milk, eggs and a really high quality cream to create a premium ice cream.”
In the New Year the company will employ a cheese maker and expand the current range of cheese lines.
“So we will be expanding our range of cheese lines, reviewing some of the flavours in our yoghurts, introducing a new ice cream range and we have just introduced cream and we have some butter and ghee that will be introduced soon,” she said.
Mungalli Creek CEO Rob Watson said the success of the company in an industry teetering on the brink of collapse relied on tapping a very different market.
“People are looking for something that is both local and healthy,” he said.
“Just before deregulation of the dairy industry in 2000 the (Department of Primary Industries) gave a number of options of what could happen to the dairy industry and the worst case scenario eventuated’
“At that point we started looking at an alternative way of doing it … and we found North Queensland tastes were into that 20 years ago and since than it has taken off.”
The new processing plant including milk vats, cheese maturation rooms and the new ice cream maker is expected to be fully operational by March next year.
Originally published as Mungalli Creek Dairy to launch new ice cream range
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