Milk: The new frontier for Trade Winds

Trade Winds Citrus Limited still enjoys a fair share of the fresh juice market, with pineapple, June plum, citrus and sorrel among the most popular choices in its Tru-Juice line, but now it’s also making strides in what Managing Director Peter McConnell describes as the new frontier for the company.

“We gone big in milk,” he boasted to The Gleaner at Wednesday’s observance of World Milk Day, held at the Tulloch Primary School in Bog Walk, St Catherine, adding that it has been an arduous but satisfying journey.

Started slowly in January 2020 with 75 Holstein cows, for which he imported Gir semen, Trade Winds now has a small population of Girolando cattle. The Gir is a dairy cattle breed originating in India and has been used extensively in the improvement of other breeds. The Girolando cows have physiological and morphological characteristics perfect for production in the tropics (udder capacity and support, size of teats, factors intrinsic to the milk, thermo-regulatory capacity, strong hooves and legs, forage conversion, reproductive efficiency). They start producing calves at around 30 months, the peak of milk production is at 10 years and they can keep on producing until about 15 years.

With 500 animals, 200 0f which are milking cows, Trade Winds has in place a state-of-the-art milking parlour which can facilitate the milking of 40 cows at a time.

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“The goal is to get up to 1,200 milking animals a day which will require a herd of about 2,500-3,000 animals. So that is the goal and we are on track,” McConnell added. They are averaging about 12 litres of milk per animal, per day, twice the national average, and their success is all by design.

“We are taking it very seriously. Precision agriculture is what we are doing and it’s the new frontier for Tru-Juice. What other juice we can make?” McConnell asked with a chuckle. “We do the full range of juices but milk is our new frontier. The citrus pulp, the pineapple pulp we feed the cows with that, so have a fully integrated system.”

Over at the booth, Marketing Manager Lauren Mahfood was chatting up a storm on the merits of their range of dairy products, as they gave out samples.

TruShake is a highly nutritious shake available in three flavours – vanilla, peanut and butter pecan and which is perfect for people on the go, she boasted. Then there is Tru Milk, a line of 100 per cent pure cow’s milk, “fresh from the farm straight to the bottle”, with the TruMoo being the flavoured line of milk, available in chocolate, cherry and egg nog.

“We also have a 100 per cent cow’s milk in the TruMoo which is more affordably priced.”

christopher.serju@gleanerjm.com