Proceedings of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production 2015. Vol 75: The sheep dairy industry in New Zealand: a review SW Peterson 1* and C Prichard 2 1 Institute of Veterinary, Animal and Biomedical Sciences, PN412 Massey University, 2 Massey Business School, Massey University PN 214, Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North 4442, New Zealand; *Corresponding author. Email S.Peterson@massey.ac.nz Keywords: sheep dairy; New Zealand; review Introduction 70 ewes to what we believe to be the largest sheep dairy operator in the world, Blue River Dairy (BRD), with over the industry’s early commercial start-up phase in the late 1990s, following the importation of East Friesian sheep in 1992 (Allison 1995; 1996). All the producers are involved in some way in producing cheese or supplying makers of artisan cheese. But the commissioning of Blue River’s powder plant in 2013, and the expected supply of sheep milk in 2015 to the dryer unit belonging to Food Innovation last few years. The success of Blue River Dairy, and the growth of the Hamilton-based dairy-goat cooperative, encouraged Government’s commercial-research-funding agency, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, to support a bid by the Crown Research Institute, AgResearch, and three of the existing dairy operators, for $5.5 million in funding to support the nascent industry. Further evidence the US, China, Israel and Europe to study sheep dairying society (King 2014; McMillan 2014a & b). Elsewhere, interest was largely expressed in ‘backroom conversations’ and rumours. Landcorp Farming Ltd (Landcorp) had privately been considering the case for investing in sheep dairying for some years under its previous CEO. Its new CEO, Steve one of its Wairakei Pastoral conversions to sheep milking. Recently it made public plans to convert two more of these farms to sheep dairying. Assuming all three will milk around the same number of animals then Landcorp’s joint-venture company ‘Spring Sheep Dairy’ may well be milking 10,000 sheep on the central plateau site by 2020. On the back of these developments and interest, of further development and so, with the help of Linda Samuelsson, the AgResearch leader for its Sheep Dairying Project, went ahead with plans to organise a conference. This paper introduces the current dairy operators, and then describes presentations made at the Ewe Milk Products and Sheep Dairy Conference held at FoodHQ in February 2015. We identify key points from the conference sessions and draw out key conclusions reached. The conference has outline important developments that have occurred since the conference. Existing dairy sheep operations Blue River Dairies Blue River Dairies commenced in 2004 with about with an average size of 2800 ewes (McMillan et al. 2014b). In 2004 the current owner, Keith Neylon, purchased the farmers who originally produced milk only for feta cheese cross and, whilst exact numbers are not available, McMillan yields of 26,603 ewes. Production is over 300 litres per ewe in 160 days (McMillan et al. 2014a). Cheeses are still produced locally but most milk has been exported as powder to Indonesia and China. BRD is understood to have infant formula to the Chinese markets ceased (following the Fonterra/AgResearch botulism scare). In part, as a response to this, BRD sold its Invercargill processing plant and its brand to Chinese interests in January 2015. The purchaser, Blueriver Nutrition HK, will continue to process milk from Antara Ag farms, the renamed farming-side of Keith Neylon’s business. Antara aims to concentrate on expanding farming and milk-production operations (McCarthy 2015). Kingsmeade “Kingsmeade” owned by Miles and Janet King at Masterton has been operating since 1996 (King et al. 2013). About 160 EF ewes grazing on 11 ha (with very limited supplementation) produce around 150 litres of milk after lambs are weaned, enabling the production of 8.5 tonnes of artisan cheese, which is manufactured on site and sold mainly in their retail outlet on the nearby state highway. Using selection based upon temperament, health and lactation length, Kingsmeade has developed arguably business has remained viable because of excellent animal husbandry, attention to detail in the factory, and because it had remained small and is vertically integrated from sheep to market, enabling close control by Miles and Janet. 119-126