Headed up by former Queenslander Edgar Collins, AustAsia has built five free-stall dairy farms in the temperate environment northern Chinese province of Shandong, plus another in Inner Mongolia, to milk 30,000 Holsteins in total.
A seventh farm in Inner Mongolia is under construction, due to come online next year, along with a processing factory next to Farm Four.
All farms are a similar size – around 100 hectares with 10 milking cow barns of 600 head per barn – and milk 5500 to 6000 cows four times a day on two 80-head fully automated rotary parlours. Each carry around 12,000 head in total and have cropping area attached.
Cows are averaging 38 litres per day at 3.3 per cent protein and 3.8 to 4pc fat.
The majority of the milk is sold to the top four processors in China and goes to fresh yoghurt, the fastest growing dairy category in China.
However, AustAsia’s factory, due to be up and running by the end of 2017, is expected to take half the milk production. It will also produce mostly yoghurt.
The total investment per farm has been about the $US80 million mark, including the cost of importing around 35000 heifers from Australia, mostly out of Victoria, with a smaller number coming from New Zealand.
Most have been shipped by WA company Wellards.
In partnership with Indonesian agribusiness Japfa and Cargill’s Black River, AustAsia, as a wholly foreign-owned investment on Chinese ground, had received a warm welcome from the Chinese Government, according to Mr Collins.
The managing director of AustAsia Investment Holdings, Mr Collins was born in New Guinea, moved to North Queensland where his family ran a dairy and was schooled in Sydney.
In 1991, he started buying feed commodities in Indonesia under the business Collins and Leahy and went on to build AustAsia’s dairy business in Indonesia, which is today that country’s market leader in fresh milk, sold under the Greenfields brand.
A seventh farm in Inner Mongolia is under construction, due to come online next year, along with a processing factory next to Farm Four.
All farms are a similar size – around 100 hectares with 10 milking cow barns of 600 head per barn – and milk 5500 to 6000 cows four times a day on two 80-head fully automated rotary parlours. Each carry around 12,000 head in total and have cropping area attached.
Cows are averaging 38 litres per day at 3.3 per cent protein and 3.8 to 4pc fat.
The majority of the milk is sold to the top four processors in China and goes to fresh yoghurt, the fastest growing dairy category in China.
However, AustAsia’s factory, due to be up and running by the end of 2017, is expected to take half the milk production. It will also produce mostly yoghurt.
The total investment per farm has been about the $US80 million mark, including the cost of importing around 35000 heifers from Australia, mostly out of Victoria, with a smaller number coming from New Zealand.
Most have been shipped by WA company Wellards.
In partnership with Indonesian agribusiness Japfa and Cargill’s Black River, AustAsia, as a wholly foreign-owned investment on Chinese ground, had received a warm welcome from the Chinese Government, according to Mr Collins.
The managing director of AustAsia Investment Holdings, Mr Collins was born in New Guinea, moved to North Queensland where his family ran a dairy and was schooled in Sydney.
In 1991, he started buying feed commodities in Indonesia under the business Collins and Leahy and went on to build AustAsia’s dairy business in Indonesia, which is today that country’s market leader in fresh milk, sold under the Greenfields brand.
