From farm to fleet to fridge

Do you ever wonder just where exactly your milk and dairy products come from?

While it might not be quite as convenient as glass bottles being dropped at our doorsteps anymore, chances are most of your cheese and yoghurt comes directly from Lactalis Australia.

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They manufacture dairy products across some of the biggest brands in the country, including Pauls, Vaalia Probiotics, Ice Break, Oak, Breaka, Lemnos, President and Galbani.

Lactalis was first founded as Pauls nearly a century ago, and only became known as Lactalis after a series of acquisitions from Parmalat and eventually the French head company of Lactalis across the ‘90s and 2000s.

The business has only continued to grow in Australia, with factories across the country which create the products that end up on supermarket shelves.

But none of it would get to those shelves without the fleet of trucks that Daniel Cooksley is responsible for. Managing outbound logistics for Lactalis’ Victorian operations, he makes sure that all the trucks end up in the right place at the right time.

“We produce milk, flavoured milk, yoghurts, cheese, desserts, any type of dairy products you can think of,” Daniel explains.

“Our factories are right around Australia, every major capital city, every state and territory. They’re all localised products made locally and sold locally. In Victoria, our main factory site is in Rowville, with our two main production facilities in Rowville and Bendigo, then we’ve got a number of smaller factories, Dandenong, Campbellfield and several across regional Victoria. Then we distribute through a distributor network.

“There’s not many hours of the week where the wheels aren’t turning, from midnight Monday morning through to midnight on Sunday night. That’s the demand of reliability.”

While all of the factories have trucks delivering their products across their respective states, most use third party logistics and contract carters in their operations.

The Victorian Lactalis factories have the advantage of having their own 20-strong fleet, which is all run in-house through Daniel and their drivers. The majority of this fleet is made up of leased Penske trucks, all MAN models, run mostly as B-doubles with refrigerated trailers.

“It’s our own logistics department essentially,” Daniel says.

“We’ve got our own drivers as our company drivers, and our prime movers through Penske. Our trailers are through Scully RSV.

“Those 20 prime movers are running across the Rowville and Bendigo sites, and we’ve got about 50 trailers. Given we dominantly run B-double combinations all our drivers are required to be multi-combination licenced.

“We don’t run them interstate. We’ll move milk from state to state and across the different plants through our third-party logistics providers from other companies, but the Victorian fleet will stay just in Victoria.”

With the model of hiring much of their fleet through Penske Leasing, Daniel believes this gives Lactalis a significant advantage in Victoria, not only through lowering operating costs, but providing the flexibility needed to stay on top.