Diana Hawkins is a food technologist by training, and loves making real food from scratch. It doesn’t matter whether it’s pasta sauce at home from fresh tomatoes, onions and olives or cheese from fresh milk and a culture/fermentation. For Hawkins, it’s about quality and knowing your ingredients. After raising babies, Diana and her husband Alan had the opportunity to buy into Karikaas, and Diana has been with the brand ever since.
Karikaas was started in 1984 by a Dutch couple, who picked Loburn because of the quality of the water.
“We took over in January 2004. We are very good at what we do and have the awards to prove it, but we are also very proud of our efforts and achievements – we care, so we can maintain our standards,” expressed Hawkins.
North Canterbury is where it all began.
“We are in North Canterbury – we collect milk from a farm in North Canterbury, all our staff live in North Canterbury, Rangiora New World is our best retail supermarket in the South Island. We are a parochial lot, and supporting our people, as individuals (staff and family), our community and our region is what we Northern Cantabrians do well.”
Karikaas collect milk as and when they need it from the farm in Oxford in their own wee tanker. Milk is then pumped into the factory, it’s pasteurised, and then sent through into one of Karikaas’ vats at an appropriate fermentation temperature. (it could be cheese, kwark, yoghurt or buttermilk).
“Culture is added and then we nurture the fermentation until it is ready for the next stage. With cheeses we hoop the curd (put into moulds), press for a few hours, and then they spend three days floating in a saturated brine solution, before heading to the cheese store. Cheeses are lovingly waxed and turned for at least two months – and up to four years, depending on the age of the cheese we are selling.”
Sustainability has been a cornerstone of Karikaas since it first began in 1984. The company use only what it needs and tries to limit waste and recycle anything it can, including heat and chemicals. Even the wastewater is recycled into growing trees.
“My biggest bug bear is the amount of vacuum packing we must use, and even the offcuts cannot currently be recycled, though our bag manufacturer is working on a recycling programme for that to occur.
“If we could sell cheeses in bigger pieces, we would massively reduce the packaging required – but that is dictated to us by supermarkets. Like many other companies, we are investigating solar as a power contribution to our system, looking at our carbon footprint and how to manage what we can and offset what we can’t while new technology is being developed.”
Karikaas have a range of Dutch style cheeses, and a range of fresh products of European style (Kwark – a fresh spreadable cheese, Yoghurt, Buttermilk, and cultured unsalted butter – a companion product to buttermilk). The company has a small shop in Loburn and a website. Fresh products are sold in South island Foodstuffs supermarkets, and cheeses are sold in supermarkets all over New Zealand. A number of wineries and deli’s around the country also stock Karikaas cheeses.
Hawkins explained that if a chef or manufacturer is wanting quality and flavour in a cheese, then that’s what Karikaas does, but she noted, for them it needs to be functional – do they want to melt it, grill it, serve it fresh, use it as a garnish? You need different cheeses for different purposes.
The philosophy behind Karikaas is that it’s a brand that cares.
“We care about our people firstly, we care about what we do and how we do it, making sure we make the best products from the best ingredients we can source. We care about our community and our customers. Sustainability is about working with everyone to give us all the best we can do ethically, maintaining profitability, and being proud of our achievements collectively – because you can’t do this on your own. It’s a team – every part is dependent on every other part.”
