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What is a co-operative?
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Our locations
The milk used by Dairy Farmers comes from farms across New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory. Click here to see a map of our milk supply regions.

Dairy Farmers has various manufacturing sites throughout New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria.

What products do we produce?
Dairy Farmers produces, markets and sells a wide range of milk and dairy foods. The product range includes many different types of fresh and long life milk, flavoured milk, yogurt, cheese, custard, desserts and sour cream.

We sell these products under a wide range of different brands which you will have probably seen in your local shop or supermarket. These include Dairy Farmers, Cracker Barrel, COON, dare, OAK, moove, Shape and SKI.

A hundred years ago, Dairy Farmers provided milk, cream and butter and over the years we have become a market leader in innovation, producing new and interesting dairy foods.

Dairy Farmers produced Australia’s first mainstream fruit flavoured yogurt: SKI.

We made Australia’s first longlife milk: Dairy Farmers.

We produced the world’s first ‘no cholesterol’ milk: Farmers Best.

Dairy Farmers introduced SKI Double Up into the market, Australia’s first split pack yogurt and was also the first to create a thick and creamy texture for low fat yogurt, marketed under its hugely popular Dairy Farmers Thick & Creamy range.

These types of products have won, and continue to win numerous major awards. Check the awards section of our website regularly for our latest award wins.

How do we manufacture products?
It starts at the farm, with the cows and the farmers producing our key raw ingredient, milk. We work with our farmers to ensure the milk from the cow is the best it can be. Here's how we do it

• On the farm
  We have a team of people advising our farmers about such things as feed and pasture management, breeding and genetics, milking technology, cleanliness and correct storage - as well as good business practices. 
• Collecting the milk from the farm
  Tankers are sent to collect the milk. Each batch is tested at collection time. The milk is delivered directly to our manufacturing plants and it is processed within 72 hours of milking to maintain freshness. Milk must be refrigerated at all times. It is tested again on entry to the plant, to determine temperature, purity, fat content and nutrients.
• At the milk factory
  Dairy Farmers incorporates strict hygiene procedures across all its supply chain. Everyone entering our factories will have disinfected their hands and shoes, covered their hair, removed all jewellery and will be wearing protective clothing to ensure the milk processing is hygienic at all times.
• Manufacturing process
  What happens next depends on what sort of product we want to make. Let’s use flavoured milk as an example and take a look at how it is manufactured.
  
  The milk will first be pasteurised (heated briefly to purify the milk) and homogenised (the fat particles are mixed in so they won’t float to the top as cream). A certain quantity will be allocated to the line producing a particular batch of flavoured milk, and it will flow to that part of the plant.
  
  Ingredients will be added to achieve the right flavour and sweetness and more testing will take place to ensure the batch meets the required specifications.
  
  We produce flavoured milk in cartons and bottles of different shapes and sizes, for our different markets. The flavoured milk will progress to the part of the line where it is put into this packaging, labelled, sealed and stamped with its use by date. Even at this stage, further tests are done on sample packs, to ensure taste and consistency.

How is a product developed?
That manufacturing process sounded fairly straight forward didn’t it? But as you can imagine, a lot of work goes on behind the scenes. Let’s look a bit deeper into what is going on.

Before we decide to develop a new product, we ask ourselves a series of questions such as will consumers like this product? We use market research as our main tool for this. By taking consumers’ feedback and adding in our own expertise and experience, we develop ideas for new products, new packaging, or changes to existing products or their packaging.

We also get ideas from our research into new food technologies, social trends, medicinal and/or health initiatives.

The types of questions we ask to develop a new product idea
To determine if the idea is worth pursuing, we have to ask ourselves a range of questions. Here are just some of them:

• Does the product idea fit in with the image of Dairy Farmers?
• What brand should we market it under?
• What will this cost to produce?
• What ingredients would we need? What sort of packaging?
• Do we need to buy new equipment or modify our machines?
• Can we store and transport it safely, meeting freshness and quality requirements?
• Can we make a profit from this product?

People with a range of skills work in teams and follow special processes to answer these questions as well as bring new products to market. People with backgrounds in marketing, sales, food technology and science, engineering, manufacturing, quality assurance, finance, communication, consumer services, information services and logistics all get involved at various stages to ensure the idea is feasible.

What is the next stage of product development?
A recipe for making the product (or the change to existing products or processes) has to be worked out and then tested on a production line.

The packaging has to be designed and sourced, labelling requirements worked out and quality assurance procedures set in place. Ingredients also have to be sourced and supply has to be organised.

If changes to the production line are needed, new equipment may be bought or engineering changes will be made to existing equipment. Employees are also trained on how to use the new equipment.

Once all this has been completed, the new product goes into full production.

Marketing our products
While we have been developing the product, we’ve also been devising our marketing and advertising campaigns, negotiating our sales deals, and gearing up our sales people, customers, franchise owners and consumer services people.

Each of Dairy Farmers’ brands has its own unique brand story and marketing strategies. The same goes for any new product we develop.

For example, the Moove brand appeals to the teen market with its tagline asking ‘What’s your moove?’, whilst the OAK brand has recently been repositioned to appeal to both men and women in their mid to late twenties and upwards. Its core message focuses on OAK’s key product benefit: the deliciously creamy taste.

And finally, the dare brand is positioned as an iced coffee brand, targeted at coffee drinkers within the context of today’s popular café society.

Distributing our products
Dairy Farmers products are widely available in supermarkets, convenience stores, restaurants, school canteens, food service outlets, hospitals, traditional ‘corner’ shops and other retail outlets throughout Australia.

We also export dairy products and ingredients to more than 40 countries in Asia/Pacific, Europe and the United States. Many other food companies use our milk, cream and cheese etc as ingredients in their products.

To make this happen, we have information systems in place to capture product details, as well as track orders, sales, demand, supply and financials. This is so that trucks leave the site with the right range and quantity of stock on board.

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