Once upon a time, before the Dairy Goat Cooperative came along, if you had a baby with intolerance, you probably needed to keep a goat and milk it.

These days they are kept in herds, housed mainly indoors, and the Cooperative is proving hugely successful, selling product everywhere.

Success can sometimes bring its own problems though. Due to ever increasing sales of its products overseas, the Hamilton-based Dairy Goat Cooperative is looking for more suppliers in Northland, Taranaki and the Waikato.

In 1993, when current chief executive Dave Stanley began work there, he was the only employee. These days, there's a staff of 100, a turnover of more than $100m, and three modern plants in Hamilton coping with drying, blending, canning. A further plant in Auckland makes the different cans for their multiple markets for infant and child formulas.

Stanley recently addressed a meeting of the Waikato branch of the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Science Inc. at Ruakura to let more people know about their success. They also held an open day at the plants, where groups were able to watch all the different processes from viewing galleries.

The blending and can-filling plants have been built for future expansion, and at present are also being used to process similar materials for cow-based products on contract.

'We've deliberately kept a low profile as, compared to dairy, we're still a niche marketer,” says Stanley.

'But despite producing a comparatively high-priced product for infant food, our customers, particularly in Asia, seem prepared to pay for it in increasing numbers.

'We now export to 20 countries and recent sales in Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, Thailand and Korea keep growing at record levels. Our sales have grown over 50 per cent in the last two years, so we're now looking for new suppliers to cope.”

Stanley says their plants are state of the art and farmers are always hugely impressed when they take them round the sites.

The overseas market for infant formulas is fiercely contested and the Cooperative has clear rules on many aspects of goat feed and care, to ensure its reputation remains squeaky clean for all its markets. While this can involve suppliers in reporting on what they are doing, those same suppliers are receiving extremely high prices for their milk solids, which makes working within the system well worthwhile.

Goat milk differs from cows' milk in containing different proteins and other minor components. The secretion process for goats is like that for humans and is known as apocrine secretion – against process for cows known as merocrine secretion. For some babies and young children, who don't tolerate cows' milk well, that from goats can prevent eczema and asthma.

'Some reports have said that many Asians are lactose intolerant,” says Stanley.

'In fact, goat milk also contains lactose, but it's the different proteins that mainly make the difference for intolerance in babies.”