Northern Wairoa Dairy Cooperative Mangawhare Dargaville

Looming, hulking and sulking on the edge of the brown and beautiful Wairoa River on the south side of Dargaville is the district's former pride and joy, the dairy co-op, now reduced to a patchwork palace of sadness, contemplating a long past of success and a longer future of nothing.

The Northern Wairoa Dairy Co-operative at Mangawhare, Dargaville fired up in 1902, a new employer for the Pakeha town which had happily merged with the old village, Kaihu. The Northern Wairoa River had long been a transport channel for people and goods, and Pakeha had made good use of it since they arrived in the 1800s.
The plant specialised in butter and dried milk, and happened to become a centre of Kiwi innovation when the newfangled 'Vacreator' cream pasturising machine was installed here in 1933. It was invented by H. Lamont Murray, for his dairy factory at Te Aroha but it was first installed here. The machine added a burst of steam to the pasturisation process before the vacuum stage. Then it was discovered a second burst further improved the process and did away with the need for deodourising. The concept and sales of the machine spread around New Zealand and then the world, eventually gaining approval for use in the United States.

You may view an early version of the Vacreator machine at MOTAT in Auckland. What is left here, is another disused dairy plant. It only finally shut the doors in 2000, having operated as a co-op almost that entire time, being bought up and then shut down by the competition in it's final phase, despite huge protest from the Union.

Now, the yard is used by another transport company, the buildings are mainly disused apart from a couple of odd temporary tenants which happen to both be community op shops. The big brown Wairoa river turns the corner and slopes on southward towards the Kaipara.

If you are in the area, please feel free to drop us a picture.

Image Credit: Google Maps