Located in Winton, Central Southland, Winton Stock Feed is a privately owned business that was started in 1988. The company employs around 20 people.

The Winton office is the hub for our nationwide network of Sales Representatives  and Distributors servicing the Dairy Industry throughout the North and South Islands

Nelson Lindsay, the director of Winton Stock Feed, launched the molasses business in 2003 and has been shipping molasses in container form (as opposed to bulk) throughout New Zealand.

The use of containers, he says, is the key to the growth of his company in that it allows flexibility in his operation.
“The benefits are that we can buy from several different places giving us lots of flexibility. We can go, in the Philippines, for example, into the back-blocks. We can buy from sources which have difficulty in getting enough products together to offer a ship tanker load.”

Another benefit is the cost of freight. We go to places which have container surpluses and where shipping companies want to get the containers out of there. We are taking them from container surplus areas and putting them into container deficit areas.
It is all about being competitive – molasses is a commodity.

A large proportion of Winton Stock Feed’s product was traditionally sourced from the Fiji Islands, but the company has now imports molasses from Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.

We can use different shipping companies, that service different ports by just changing our source of supply. You find your source to match the ships to go to those points which you want to go to. It’s the flexibility which you have with containers which helps to make your operation competitive.

Also, by using containers we can run lower stocks and don’t have to have expensive port-side storage terminals which make for expensive storage costs. We can pick up a container and get away from the most expensive land in the country – which is usually on the ports!

Winton Stock Feed has experienced dramatic growth since its inception. The company operates extensively throughout New Zealand.