Nestle Tongala milk processing factory for sale: Claims its rendered useless

Nestle has been accused of rendering its Tongala factory useless to deter other dairy companies from buying the plant. Here’s what is claimed Nestle has done after putting the factory on the market.

The Nestle factory at Tongala has been placed on the market 15 months after the announcement on its closure.

NESTLE has been accused of stripping its Tongala milk factory of key processing equipment “out of spite” to deter other dairy companies from buying the plant.

National Union of Workers dairy lead organiser Neil Smith said Nestle wanted to crush two ageing evaporators in the plant to render it useless to a dairy buyer.

Mr Smith said it would result in many jobs being lost in the town.

“They are doing it (removing the evaporators) out of spite so that no one else can use the factory,” he said.

The evaporators are used in the production of the dairy company’s signature Carnation brand of condensed milk and evaporated milk products.

Nestle put the Tongala factory on the market through CBRE last week after a long hiatus due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The 23,000 square metre processing plant is on 78 hectares at the edge of Tongala and includes a number of buildings and a water treatment plant on the site.

The factory was used to manufacture tinned milk, but was expanded to produce the Maggi culinary range of foods in 2010, medical nutritional products in 2012 and its iconic Milo brand three years ago.

Nestle announced in August last year it was progressively closing the factory by February, 2021, with the manufacture of its products and associated equipment moved overseas.

A Nestle Oceania spokesperson said the dairy processor would leave milk receival and the fresh milk processing equipment at the Tongala site but leased UHT equipment would be returned to the lessor and the evaporators were not staying.

“The evaporators are at the end of their lifetime; that is the reason why we are closing the factory,” the spokesperson said.

“We have been working hard to keep the evaporators running for some years.

“It wouldn’t be the right thing to do to sell equipment that is in such poor condition that we don’t think it can be used any more.”

But Mr Smith said that was “just lies to save face”.

He said the NUW had been told when the factory closure was announced last year the evaporators would be crushed.

But he said they had been used for the past year and would continue to be used until operations ceased early next year.

Nestle is not the first dairy company to render a mothballed plant unattractive to other dairy companies: Murray Goulburn’s Rochester factory and Fonterra’s Dennington plant suffered similar fates in the past two years.

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