Fonterra is busy with what it calls New Zealand's biggest spring cleaning operation.
It's taking advantage of a winter lull in milk production to prepare its 26 processing sites for the new season, when the milk starts flowing again.
It says 5000 operations staff and another 2000 contractors are carrying out maintenance that ranges from flushing thousands of vats to checking 60,000km of pipes.
Fonterra says its plants have to be ready to process more than 70 million litres of milk per day by the time the flow reaches its peak.
