- Keytone Dairy (KTD) has completed its first commercial production run at its newly built manufacturing plant in New Zealand
- This second facility was built to meet the growing demand of its customers across New Zealand, Australia and China
- However due to COVID-19, the demand for Keytone’s products have increased 4 times greater than it expected
- But the dairy manufacturer is committed to meeting its orders as its newly-built facility is expected to more than triple production capacity
- Additionally, Keytone’s business has fallen under the ‘essential services’ category as highlighted by the Government and will continue to operate across its five facilities
- Keytone Dairy is up a significant 33.3 per cent with shares trading for 30 cents each
Keytone Dairy (KTD) has announced completing the first commercial production run at its newly built manufacturing plant in New Zealand.
The company first received regulatory approval for its second New Zealand-based facility in mid-December 2019.
The formulated dairy producer built this second facility to meet the high demand of its clients in New Zealand, Australia and China.
The additional capacity from this second facility is expected to more than triple Keytone Dairy’s total product manufacturing capacity in New Zealand on a one shift basis.
Given the increased level of demand during the COVID-19 outbreak, this manufacturing capacity will be implemented immediately.
Keytone Dairy is now in a position to produce much higher volumes of finished product from its New Zealand facilities across a broader range of its proprietary product suite.
COVID-19 update
While Keytone Dairy built the second manufacturing facility to meet customer demand, it never expected to receive the recent demand it has.
The company reports the demand for dairy products has increased by about four times greater than before the outbreak of COVID-19.
Even though the facility is now online to meet the additional demand, Keytone is accelerating the roll-out of an online platform for its milk powders to be directly purchased.
Order demands have also increased from third-party clients for shelf-stable nutritional products.
“We are experiencing a significant increase in demand for nutritional products, across our product portfolio and in particular immunity-related products. Given our flexible and diversified operational manufacturing base we are in a unique position to fulfil the growing number of customer orders,” CEO Danny Rotman said.
Keytone Dairy also reiterates the recent Government restrictions around essential services includes the company as it is considered ‘essential’.
The dairy manufacturer will deploy additional risk mitigation measures around personal and food safety standards across its five manufacturing sites in New Zealand and Australia.
“We have acted quickly and diligently and put in place additional measures for the safety of our people and customers as well as to ensure the continuity of our diversified operations,” Danny added.
Keytone Dairy is up a significant 33.3 per cent with shares trading for 30 cents each at 1:42 pm AEDT.