Happy Cow Milk Company, rising from the ashes

It was a black day for Canterbury-based Happy Cow Milk when in May the company lauded for its "ethical" dairying approach and favoured by some of the trendiest baristas in Christchurch went into liquidation.
Share on twitter
Share on facebook
Share on linkedin
Share on whatsapp
Share on email

Owner Glen Herud​ had founded a dairying system that allowed calves to stay with their mothers and milk to be sold in reusable glass bottles. He had a huge following of fans … but had to admit his enterprise had failed.
«I set out to prove that you can do dairy differently in New Zealand. But in reality, you can’t. Not without some serious money behind you,» he says.
«I hit a wall. I was out of money. I was tired. My kids hadn’t had a proper dad. And I’d been a pretty poor husband. I decided to admit that this was the end of the road.
«I typed a message on Facebook to say I was closing down.»
Herud founded Happy Cow Milk Company in 2012. His aim was to create a more ethical and sustainable dairy model than that of the large dairy companies. He knew what the public wanted, he says, and that was milk from ethically farmed, happy, healthy cows.
On his property at Ohoka, calves weren’t sent to slaughter at four days old but stayed with mum until 15 weeks, the optimal time for weening.
Cows didn’t stagger miles to and from the milking shed. A mobile shed came to them. And the milk was processed on-farm in a processing plant Herud made from two containers.
Winding this up was heartbreaking, but Herud’s frank Facebook declaration had an extraordinary outcome.
«By the end of the day, there were hundreds of comments, offers of support, suggestions for crowdfunding. Designers, writers, marketers I’d worked with offered to pitch in. I was overwhelmed,» he says.
Within 24 hours Herud was back on Facebook sketching out ideas for how Happy Cow version two might work.
Today he works and schemes from co-working space BizDojo in central Christchurch, a vibrant loft of hot-desks, house plants and innovative hard workers.
He credits this haven for the positive frame of mind he is now in.
«[Shareholders] were telling me what a failure I was and then I came here and its really positive and instrumental. What I’m developing is based on conversations with people here. If I was at home I wouldn’t be thinking along the lines I am now and relaunching the way I’m going to.
«For instance, The Press had just reported the liquidation and Roger Sutton walked past. He said he had just read the news and gave me five points of advice on what I should do. I would never have talked to him if I hadn’t worked out of here.
«For instance he said it was imperative I write down all the things that went wrong as this would force me to articulate in greater detail and get further insight.»
Herud has ideas aplenty but few funds. To keep the wolf from the door he has tapped into a Patreon account, where people make monthly donations to his cause. He has 624 people donating anything from a dollar to $100 a month, he says.
«Once that was secured I set about working out how I was going to relaunch. I’d spent four years working with small-scale dairy and distribution and knew the way I’d done it didn’t work.
«I’ve gone back and looked at this and redesigned a better way.»
Herud has settled on a model whereby small farmers process their own milk and supply their local markets. Each farmer will have his own small milk processor which Herud is designing.
It’s very expensive to set up a processing plant, around $250,000 and too much risk for farmers, he says.
«What I have done is shrunk it down to a system that will cost $15,000 to $20,000. Once I have that prototyped I will submit it to MPI (Ministry of Primary Industries) for approval.
«It can be placed on an existing dairy farm or a lifestyle block. What I’m trying to do is get lots of smaller suppliers (with their own processors) around Christchurch to supply the city. They could milk five, 10 or 100 cows and process their own milk. And farm the «happy cow way» which is what the customers want.»
Its a decentralised model of lots of small-scale plants all processing lots of little amounts of milk, he says.
«It’s going to give MPI ‘the shivers.’ But once I’ve shown them ‘the how and the why’ they will see there isn’t too much risk to it.
«What prompted me to get up and going again? The support from my customers and the public nationwide shows there is a market there and I’m on the right track. I just didn’t have all the pieces together.
«A lot of people think I’m mad and have tried to intervene. They think I’m suffering from depression because from the outside it looks pretty crazy.
«But it would be a waste to use all those learnings and not go forward.»

Mirá También

Así lo expresó Domingo Possetto, secretario de la seccional Rafaela, quien además, afirmó que a los productores «habitualmente los ignoran los gobiernos». Además, reconoció la labor de los empresarios de las firmas locales y aseguró que están «esperanzados» con la negociación entre SanCor y Adecoagro.

Te puede interesar

Notas
Relacionadas