An oat farmer, an oat miller, an oat breeder, an oat milk brand and an oat milk factory walk into a bar…
This March we hosted our partner and Freeflow Manufacturing boss, Scott, down south. We spent the day with Henry from Harraways mill, Adrian from Plant Research NZ and the Gardyne family who are central to the oat grower group.
We chatted on where the industry has come from, and where the industry can get to. We acknowledged all the hard work from everyone around the table and we welcomed Scott in everything Freeflow are doing to help the oat industry take massive strives forwards. We saw the oat R&D work from Adrian close up, we rode in harvesters that were busy getting this years crop off, and most importantly we had severals cups of tea and homemade oat caramel slice.
We are incredibly proud of the team around the table and even more so for where this oat industry group can get to in the next 5 years.
In terms of the factory commissioning, we are oh-so-painfully close to our first end to end sterilisation test, and pilot run. We have had some hold ups but the team has worked so well to problem solve and mitigate the delays (sometimes getting equipment through a dried up Panama Canal simply can't be helped!) Our plan is to kick it into high gear after Easter and run first trials the first week back - all going well and if green lights are go - we will move to our first pilot run and sampling of oat milk.
We are so close we can taste it, thank you for your patience.
