DAIRY SPECIAL
NORTON
Owen Norton explains that
his dad and uncle were
the creators behind the
famous Snowflake ice
cream brand that was sold for more
than 80 years throughout the West
Coast. Laurence Norton and his
brother Wallace began dairy farming
in Greymouth after World War
One. Laurence had been working
as an engineer on a ship at sea,
while Wallace was a pilot recently
returned from Britain. Owen says that
his dad and uncle would take their
horse and cart into town, stocked
with milk from their farm to sell to
Greymouth locals. “They ended up
with a surplus of milk and thought
it’d be a good idea to make some ice
cream,” Owen says. By 1922 Owen’s
father and uncle were set up in the
Riversdale dairy in Cobden, making
Snowflake ice cream. The business
took off and in the early 1930s, when
demand started to rise, they moved
Riversdale dairy to the family property
at Coal Creek, after building a
large factory, which is still standing
today. Tragedy struck the family in
1939, and Owen’s father and uncle
passed away within months of each
other, leaving 18-year-old Owen to
run the family business with the help
of his grandfather, his mother and
her brother Arthur Carson. In 1947,
Riversdale dairy moved its milk production
to a new milk treatment plant
in Greymouth, which Arthur Carson
managed at the time; and kept producing
Snowflake ice cream from the
Coal Creek factory, Owen says. He
had a knack for marketing and would
go around the West Coast with his
product, in the hopes of getting it sold
in stores. His hard work paid off and,
in the early days, Snowflake was sold
throughout the West Coast. Owen
says the secret to success was
simply getting out there and selling
his product. “To be in this business
you had to enjoy meeting people.”
He says the business had plenty of
loyal West Coast customers throughout
the years, some so loyal that
they’d send Owen blank cheques
and tell him to, “square up their bill”.
The business even expanded into
ice-making, which they supplied to
fishing boats, butchers, cargo ships
and retails fish shops; and they also
became wholesalers for butter from
the Inter-Wanganui dairy factory in
Hari Hari. Since taking over the business
in 1947, Owen had to keep up
with changing technology over the
years and says refrigeration breakthroughs
made life in an ice cream
factory a lot easier. “Refrigeration
led to more efficiency. In the beginning,
we had to use insulated bags
to put the orders in, then we’d go
out and deliver. By the end of a hot
day some of the orders were pretty
soft, until refrigerated trucks came to
be,” Owen says. While the business
had become successful, a difficult
time came when the factory caught
fire after being hit by lightning early
one morning in 1994 - leaving the
factory gutted. Owen helped supervise
the rebuild of the factory, along
with staff member Kevin Barlow.
While the business was repaired, it
didn’t operate from the factory for
nearly a year. The brand survived
through the fire and continued to be
popular throughout the South Island.
Snowflake sold around 20 flavours
and was distributing in Oamaru, Timaru,
Blenheim, Christchurch, Invercargill,
and into Countdown stores
before being sold to Development
West Coast in 2008. Despite the
brand no longer in production, to
this day Snowflake is an iconic West
Coast brand, with most people remembering
the great taste from a lick
of hokey pokey or scoop of banana
choc chip.
OWEN
(Greymouth)
Two dairy farmers, a surplus of milk
and a bright idea were the right
ingredients for an ice cream business
to come to life in the early 1920s.
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24 FEBRUARY 2019
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