At a meeting held with Arapuni residents Wednesday 7th October Zogan Ltd presented a comprehensive proposal for their planned development – a $100 million, state-of-the-art, milk powder processing plant. The plant, located 1km from the village centre of Arapuni, will produce specialty infant formula milk powder. 14.5ha of land was purchased for the development with three other sites in the district also considered. The site was chosen due to the increase in dairy farming around Arapuni and the level of unemployment in the town. Other things included in their decision were the proximity to electricity, gas and water supplies - with a green-fields aspect to allow excess water to distribute.

Although the group still need to apply for resource consent they seem confident in their ability to get the project off the ground and hope to begin construction in 2010 and have the plant operational by August 2011. Zogan Ltd is focused on meeting best practice standards and has run models to make sure the development will meet standards for air quality, water discharge and noise pollution.

The plant will employ 50-60 full time workers once it is operating ($3.5 million in wages), and contract 80-90 local milk suppliers, collecting 40 loads of milk per day and processing around 1.1 million litres of raw milk per day with an estimated turnover of $160 million.