Market leader in metal packaging for infant formula products, Jamestrong, invited customers and select media to the opening of its new high-care facility in Christchurch, New Zealand last week. PKN was there.
The burgeoning infant formula market in Australia and New Zealand, driven by escalating demand from China, is fuelling growth in the packaging supply chain. And as dairy manufacturers and contract fillers continue to ride the milky wave, their packaging suppliers are following closely in their wake.
It's a market that calls for the stringent safety standards in packaging and processing. Local fillers are licensed to export direct to China under extremely tight food safety and recipe content regimes.
For metal packaging converter Jamestrong, market leader in the production infant formula cans in New Zealand and Australia, investing in high-tech facilities is part of an overall infant formula strategy to partner with and protect its customers' brands with highest quality, food safety, and hazard control protocols.
Last week, Jamestrong opened its newest plant at Hornby, the first fully enclosed, high-care can production facility in New Zealand. This adds to the string of investments by Jamestrong since it entered the market in 2015, when its owner and the largest can maker in China – the Shanghai Yuanlong Investment Company – bought the metal packaging business in Australia formerly owned by Ardagh.
In the last 18 months, Jamestrong has opened a $13m high-care can making facility in Kyabram, Victoria, and invested a further $13m in a KBA Metal Star printing press at its Milperra NSW to supply its can production facilities with what it claims is the “highest quality decorated tinplate in the ANZ marketplace”.
The new Hornby facility, located in the Canterbury district of Christchurch, will primarily supply anchor customer Synlait, contract filler for The a2 Milk Company, whose canned infant and toddler formula products are exported to both Australia and China.
The fully automated can line at Hornby comprises world-leading can making equipment and cutting edge vision systems to validate internal can surfaces are clean and external can print has no defects. In full flight, the line produces 320 cans per minute.
Addressing guests at the official plant opening, Jamestrong CEO Alex Commins said the company was delighted to be part of the growth story that is infant formula production in Australia New Zealand.
“Clearly this is an industry where safety is everything and failure, right through the supply chain, is simply not an option," Commins said.
“At Jamestrong, we understand the critical nature of controlling hazards, defining risks, and complying with quality and food safety certifications through our entire process.
“We are driven by brand protection of our customer. We are building our culture around best-in-class high-care facility manufacture to ensure the integrity and compliance of our product that will naturally flow into [the customer's], and then onto [their] final customers... the 20 million or so babies born each year in the China, and the lesser number born in our local markets.”
For Jamestrong, proximity to customers is key – shipping large empty cans any distance makes no sense commercially. So it came as no surprise, following Synlait's recent announcement of its manufacturing investment in Auckland, that Commins took the opportunity at the Hornby event to announce that the company is in the process of securing a further site for an additional high care can manufacturing facility in Auckland, with expectations that it will have its first saleable commercial cans rolling off that line by January or February 2019.
Commins said what the new can lines mean for the region is that they bring 30 years of infant formula manufacture in the ANZ market to a “new level of food safety, quality and brand protection”.
The full story on the new plant will be published in the March-April print issue of PKN.
