Factory another chapter for Edendale

Edendale has a modest sign at each end of town just simply stating "Edendale home of NZ’s cheese industry 1881-today makers of finest cheese".

The sign was erected in 1981 to commemorate its centenary. Much has happened before and since then keeping it at the forefront of the dairy industry.

The most common Māori spellings of the Edendale plains were Maoriua or Mairirua. The Crown Commissioner had designated it as "Run 97" but John Douglas, about the third owner of the plains, named it Edendale — the inference being to the Garden of Eden.

It wasn’t until 1866 when the New Zealand Australian Land Company bought the Edendale Estate with the backing of two Scottish Banks that productive gains were made. The manager Thomas Brydone was a visionary and the entrepreneur assessed Edendale soil the best in Southland.

When sheep prices were marginal, along with his associate William Davidson, he planned to establish a dairy factory which found favour with the settlers. A cheese maker was commandeered from Denmark and a plant from Canada. The first cheese and butter were produced in 1881, beginning a record of achievements that would be difficult to match by similar companies in NZ.

When SS Dunedin sailed to London with the first frozen shipment of mutton in 1882 there was also a consignment of cheese from Edendale and, like the meat, it arrived in top condition.

That launched two of NZ’s biggest industries — meat and dairy — and saw the proliferation of freezing works and dairy factories.

Edendale can’t claim to be the first — that honour belongs to a small one near Portobello — but it received the government prize of £500 for the first factory to produce 50 tonnes of cheese suitable for export.

It became a farmer owned co-operative in 1904 when the Land Companies sold their estate and in 1914 — built near the factory — the sugar of milk lactose plant was the first in New Zealand and largest in the southern hemisphere. A derivative of whey sugar, lactose has many attributes as a food additive in infant formula, brewing and pharmaceuticals.

Southland’s dairy industry boomed for half of the 20th century, when there were more than 60 cheese factories. When cows gave way to sheep, factories closed until Edendale was the last one operating.

Then came Southland’s dairy renaissance, when Fonterra chose Edendale, the oldest continuing dairy manufacturing site in New Zealand, to build the largest dairy factory in NZ and largest processing factory in the world of fresh milk. Cheese production ceased in 2023 after 143 years. In its place Fonterra is adding a ultra high temperature cream plant costing $150 million, another chapter in Edendale’s continuing story.