Only one is outside China: at Glenavy on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island about 100km north of Dunedin.
But Yili, as it is known, is hoping it can gain a few more with a successful bid for Murray Goulburn.
Yili is the eighth largest dairy processor in the world, with a sales turnover of A$11.7 billion in 2016 and has already reported an 11.3 per cent improvement on last year for the first six months of this financial year.
In 2013, the company made its first overseas dairy factory investment outside China by buying Oceania Dairy from a group of investors who had nothing more than a shell of a company, a block of land on the South Island at Glenavy and a pipe dream.
Yili invested about A$240 million in its stage one development of the greenfields site, which included a 10 tonne an hour milk dryer, associated boilers and other equipment and a small laboratory for testing its products.
Oceania Dairy general manager Roger Usmar said stage two of the development had just been commissioned.
Mr Usmar said it comprised canning, blending and packaging lines for infant formula manufacture, plus UHT manufacturing lines at a cost of about A$145 million.
He said a second, larger laboratory for testing of Oceania Dairy’s products was just going through an approvals process.
Mr Usmar said a third stage of development had been foreshadowed when the whole project was announced in 2013 but it had yet to be planned. He said it was likely to include another milk dryer.
“This is a showpiece operation built to exceedingly high standards,” he said.
Mr Usmar said the plant had 95 staff working for the company when it opened in 2015 but that had risen to 225 today, mostly from the local community.
Oceania Dairy has 73 dairy farmers supplying the processing plant, with each averaging about 600 milkers. All are within a 50km radius of the factory.
Mr Usmar said he did not believe securing enough milk suppliers for any future expansion of the Glenavy factory would be a problem.
“We believe we have a healthy pipeline of suppliers willing to join us,” he said.
Mr Usmar said the company was competitive with its milk price.
