The Milk Factory

I love local newspapers, I always find hidden treasures in them.  That's how I found out about my $3 zumba class, and free swim lessons for the kids, and the Fonterra Open Day.

It was such an awesome day, something we plan on making an annual family day out.  They had games and exhibitions, face painting, free samples, trucks to sit in, a band playing, just a fun family day.

The boys loved their free trumpets.  They also got chocolate milk and cheese, and they had a spit roast company there making sandwiches (I've decided I love roast beef), and everything for free!  It was a good thing Tui didn't come with us, or they would have gone out of business. Lol.





They got to sit in a milk tanker and beep the horn.  I learnt that it's a really technical job being a driver, there are so many things you have to be in control of, deadlines to meet, technical computery machinery things.  Tough job, good on them.



The line for the factory tours was 2 hours long.  But thank goodness for this angel woman Kate who saw that I was struggling (you couldn't take strollers in the factory so I had fatty boomba strapped to my front, and holding hands with two little toddlers who did NOT want to stand still.), and smuggled me to the front of the line.  I will love her forever.  We all had to wear fluorescent vests and safety glasses.  The boys looked so cute.





We weren't allowed to take any pictures inside the factory.  But man was it awesome. Ok, the billion stairs to climb, not so awesome.  But everything that we saw and learnt.  Heaps of cool robots that the boys thought were amazing.  I learnt that in a day, the factory processes 6million litres of milk.  80% gets made into milk powder and exported, mostly to china.  And the last 20% is what gets used for milk, cheese, butter, cream, and cream cheese.

A long tiring day, but so worth it.  Malachi's still buzzing about the robots and the tankers and "can the lady give me another icecream?".





Thanks Fonterra.