Earlier this month, Fonterra announced a $240million mozzarella plant would be built at its Clandeboye site in South Canterbury, believed to be the single largest food service investment in the history of New Zealand dairy.
It will double Fonterra’s capacity to produce individually quick-frozen mozzarella cheese and also make the site the largest producer of natural mozzarella in the southern hemisphere.
Playing a key role in the research and development concerning mozzarella had been a highlight in Mr Johnston’s career, the culmination of a life dedicated to science.
Like many of his colleagues, Mr Johnston had a strong interest in science when he was growing up.
»It was one of my favourite subjects at school. It was mainly chemistry. I think I was fascinated with the way you could combine things and get something completely different,» he said.
That interest led to completing a science degree but jobs in the 1970s were scarce and he decided to work and study at the same time.
He started a three-year, extramural New Zealand Certificate of Science and Chemistry and was hired as a technician in a Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries lab in New Plymouth, one of about six around New Zealand which checked export products before they left the country.
»In those days, you had to have a Government stamp. There were tests on dairy products – butter and cheese – and these were basically composition and general analytical, microbiological tests for quality, to ensure they were within certain specifications,» he said.
Mr Johnston was hired as a technician and undertook routine testing of caseins, before moving on to micro-testing of cheese and later managing some of the work done in the lab.
From there, he moved to Hamilton to work in the National Dairy Laboratory, another Maf site, spending 13 years there.
But when the »user-pays philosophy» started to bite into Maf, there was a lot of rationalisation.
Mr Johnston could see that not only his laboratory would disappear, but also the other Maf laboratories.
He was faced with the prospect of either staying in Hamilton and looking for a completely different job or finding something that would enable him to take a different path.
So he went »back to the future», entering the Maf graduate training programme at the age of 34.
Back then, it was an intensive one-year dairy science course for students who had finished their university studies. He qualified through his extensive work experience.
»It was a huge crossroads for me. I was married with a young son. Everyone else was directly out of university. The majority of them were in their early 20s.»
Mr Johnston was still working as well. His participation in the course was sponsored by Maf, which meant it took him two years to complete.
In 1988, he began work at the New Zealand Dairy Research Institute in Palmerston North, the predecessor to Fonterra’s Research and Development Centre.
It was in the early days of mozzarella as a product in New Zealand and there were some issues.
»They were having problems controlling the functionality, the process and the shelf life of the product.
»One of my supervisors, Frank Dunlop, was developing a new process. And I came in and he said to me, ‘mozzarella’s the cheese of the future’ so I helped with trials and I’ve been working on it ever since,» he said.
Driven by a strong belief in their science and the value of the product, Mr Johnston and his colleagues looked at different processes.
Some would fall over as production was scaled up, others would be trumped by bigger global competitors rushing their work to patent. One such legal move ruined nine months of research and trials.
Eventually, Mr Johnston, another technologist Peter Elston and the rest of the team worked out a process they could patent that not only allowed the co-operative to produce a stable, profitable mozzarella at production scale but one that could be used almost as soon as it was produced, rather than waiting many weeks, as was the case with traditional mozzarella.
That work and the commercialisation of the process was the highlight of Mr Johnston’s career. In 2007, he received a Fonterra Distinguished Research Award.
Three years ago, the co-operative was named most innovative exporter at the New Zealand Innovation Awards for its development of mozzarella.
Source: ODT
Link: https://www.odt.co.nz/business/mozzarella-highlight-technologists-career
