TWO new rotary dairies, one of them the State’s only robotic rotary platform, will feature at Western Dairy’s 20th annual Dairy Innovation Day next year.
Western Dairy director Mat Daubney – his term ends at the annual general meeting tomorrow, Friday, November 22 – and his family at Bannister Downs Dairy, Northcliffe, will host the first part of Dairy Innovation Day at their newly completed The Creamery.
Wally and Julie Bettink will host the second part of Dairy Innovation Day at their nearby Westland Acres farm bordering the forest of Boorara-Gardner National Park, Northcliffe.
With their financial backer, WA mining and cattle magnate Gina Rinehart, the Daubneys launched The Creamery last month, two years after site works started in a paddock near their existing Bannister Downs Dairy operation.
An award-winning building, The Creamery combines a DeLaval robotic rotary dairy, new processing plant and dispatch centre with new administrative offices, a shop and tourism precinct including glass-walled viewing area where visitors can watch the whole process from cows coming in to be milked to trucks being loaded with dairy products.
The Bettinks this year replaced their old herringbone dairy that only narrowly escaped the 2015 Northcliffe bushfires, that burnt out half of their farm, with a rotary platform.
Dairy Innovation Day will be on Thursday, May 16.
Western Dairy executive officer and Innovation Day curator Esther Jones said the opportunity to showcase two businesses that were strongly investing in the WA dairy industry would provide a foundation for the event’s program.
“Dairy Innovation Day has won a reputation for bringing the industry together and providing a forum of information, motivation and celebration,” Ms Jones said.
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“What keeps it fresh and new is the fact that we locate it on a different WA dairy farm every year.
“Our message is there is no one farm or system that we advocate, but rather, it’s the innovative business minds of the people who farm, that we showcase.
“Our 2019 event is a classic example of that, both farms are a showcase of latest dairy technology at work – one that is within reach of the average family business and the other that requires a substantial co-investor and a large appetite for growth and expansion.”
The day will start at Bannister Downs and then move to the Bettink dairy mid-afternoon, ahead of an industry dinner that evening.
Sponsorship and exhibition opportunities will open this month and will be managed by Western Dairy’s extension co-ordinator Jess Andony.
- For information, contact Ms Andony on 0435 174 719.