Pure Dairy joins with Great Lakes Cheese in Dandenong plant

A new dairy processing site is set to be one of the largest of its kind in Australia when it opens next year. Here’s a sneak peak.

More than 100 jobs will be created by a huge dairy development in Melbourne’s southeastern suburbs — although an undisclosed proportion of its produce will be internationally sourced.

An estimated $100m processing site is being constructed at Dandenong South by Pure Dairy, and set to be one of the largest of its kind nationwide when it opens next year.

Pure Dairy confirmed today the project has received backing from America’s leading cheese packager Great Lakes Cheese — the first time the US dairy giant has developed a presence in Australia.

Set to open in April 2025, Pure Dairy executive chairman Adrian Josephson said the new site would be the first permanent processing facility operated by the business.

It has previously used third party operators to process cheese and other product — using material from Australian-based factories such as Saputo Allansford as well as dairy sourced from abroad.

“We go to third parties — we’ll say ‘here’s the raw material, can you shred this, slice this, dice this, put it in a 1kg bag, 2kg bag, put Pure Dairy cheddar on it, Pure Dairy mozzarella on it’ and then we sell it,” Mr Josephson said.

“We work with food distributors PFD, Bidfood, Superior to move our products around the country to pubs, clubs, restaurants, caterers, schools, prisons, sporting grounds.”

Pure Dairy executive chairman Adrian Josephson at the new Dandenong South factory

Mr Josephson said his business chose the greenfield Dandenong South site in order to start from the ground up, rather than using pre-existing infrastructure.

The southeastern Melbourne location was also picked due to its proximity to port and rail infrastructure, with a percentage of cheese processed set to emanate from New Zealand and the United States.

Once processed and packaged, the finished dairy product will either be sent to the Australian market for hospitality and retail or be destined for export.

“We’ve seen a lot of sites around the world so we know what makes them work, what makes them successful,” Mr Josephson said.

“We decided to go greenfield, built it from scratch … we’ve put nothing second-hand into this site, everything is brand-new, leading technology.”

Great Lakes Cheese chief financial officer Mark Anderson said they were impressed by Pure Dairy’s track record, making it the company’s first investment outside the United States.

Aerial view of Pure Dairy's new Dandenong South processing site

Dairy lobby leaders have raised concerns about the direction of the industry this decade with consumers increasingly snapping up discounted foreign produce.

Data from Dairy Australia has shown the import influx reached a peak in the 2022-23 financial year at 343,557 tonnes, with a slight easing in 2023-24 of 316,000 tonnes.

When asked how what percentage of dairy produce is likely to be processed at the Dandenong site, Mr Josephson said it would be seasonally dependent.

“It varies every year, it’s always a tough one to answer. When Australia’s got lots of milk, we’re exporting a lot more Australian (produce). But when Australia doesn’t have a flush of milk, when we might not be making parmesan, there’s a need to find parmesan from somewhere else — it could be European it could be out of New Zealand,” he said.