Orica Chemnet celebrated a $35 million upgrade to its Mount Maunganui plant today with speeches and plant tours.

The enabling industry provides a wide range of difficult-to-handle chemicals for dairy and food processing industries requiring high-grade cleaners for equipment. They also produce food grade acids for manufacturing.

Orica Chemnet has competed a $35m upgrade.

Guided tours of the plant followed lunch and some speeches, with engineering manager Marie Grimshaw pointing out and explaining the visible additions and alterations to the plant, including an acid tank farm and auto wash for intermediate bulk containers.

The Orica plant has been in Totara Street for 49 years, and much of the $35 million has been spent underground, says Orica NZ general manager Matt Cawte.

While in the past storm water and trade waste from plants similar to Orica were discharged into the harbour, there is now a zero tolerance for discharge.

Sensors test all storm water run-off for contamination and stop the drains if any plant products are detected, diverting the rainwater into holding tanks where contaminants can be separated out. The auto wash for bulk containers has a similar system.

'The $35 million major capital works make us really well positioned for the future,” says Matt. 'The developments that happen now are a lot more niche and a lot more customer focused.”

'The acid tank farm means we can bring new and more developed products to the market for dairy, cleaning, food and beverage - those kind of things. It means we can capitalise on this fantastic infrastructure that we have got.

'For us the future is around quality, safety and handling our chemicals well, and the site's way ahead of the game. The next thing is applying all our scientific knowledge to our basic chemistry knowledge.

'To be honest, that makes the job exciting. We take the basic chemistry and it's how we apply it that makes the difference.”

The upgrade was officially opened by Mayor Stuart Crosby. ICI, now Orica, first established a presence in the Bay of Plenty in 1963, and today employs over 75 staff at the Mt Maunganui site.

The Totara Street site manufactures more than 100,000 tonnes of bulk and blended products per year and has annual truck movements of 10,000.