ONE OF the biggest achievements of the Shanghai Pengxin renovation of a former Crafar dairy farm near Hamilton is peace with the neighbours and community.

A while back, Jason Colebourn who manages the Collins Rd property for Pengxin's sharemilker Landcorp, says he wondered if the local customary wave was a one-fingered salute, so often did he get one when working on the farm whose environmental calamities helped spur the collapse of the 16-farm Crafar dairying empire six years ago.

Colebourn moved onto the farm one year into the receivership of the Crafar farm estate and for two more years until the sale to the Chinese company was finalised, the Collins Rd property would remain an eyesore.

Pengxin has bankrolled the Collins Rd farm resurrection for $1.72 million and counting.

Colebourn and his five staff have supplied the brains and brawn to turn what was by all accounts a train wreck into an operation which this season will produce 365,000kg milksolids and is turning a profit for its owner.

Along the way they've mended fences with neighbours, says Colebourn, a serial farm doer-upper, whose farming start in blue chip Tatuanui dairy country could hardly be further from the rather bleak black peat expanses of Collins Rd.

The Crafar farms sale to a Chinese company was controversial with public campaigns and court challenges to try to keep the properties in New Zealand hands. But Pengxin took on challenges many Kiwis may have quailed at, even if their pockets could have withstood the punishment.

Take Collins Rd for example. The 393 hectare (354ha effective) farm is 5.4km long and 1.2km wide. The dairy shed is at one end, which means cows can walk up to 10km a day. Colebourn estimates each cow sheds 1.5kg to 2kg dry matter daily. (A second dairy is on the cards).

Most of the property is peat. The property was once part of the former Lands and Survey's huge Rukuhia Swamp. Extensive drainage work in the district in the past 20 years means farms now dry out in summer. Peat depth ranges from two feet deep to 80 feet in places.

Many paddocks needed urgent attention. Olsen fertility levels had sunk to 6 and 7 in some sample areas. The soil was very acid with the ph level down to 4.95 in places.

Pengxin has had all paddocks soil tested and the fertiliser programme has seen up to 15 tonne of lime applied to some paddocks. Soil has now been cultivated on 65 per cent of the farm to a depth of 350mm.

Grasses are base tetraploid and "prospect", a perennial ryegrass brand.

"Rock star grasses don't last on peat," he says. Total grass production has climbed from 9000kg dry matter/ha to 12,000kg dry matter/ha.

One of the company's first jobs was to put in a $270,000 new effluent pond.

Pengxin has taken on all animal health costs, Colebourn says.

The property's history was "a mass of gorse and nodding thistles with a huge number of carcasses", he says.

Out of 184 paddocks, only seven had power. The water system was a nightmare, he says.

"A herd at the back of the property didn't get water until late in the day. The water was disgusting - bright orange and it tasted metallic, the high manganese content. The cows couldn't drink it."

Three bores have been reduced to one, 182 new water troughs have been installed, and a new filtration system treats the iron and manganese in the water. New pumps have been installed.

"We've set up loop lines so there is now a huge water volume," Colebourn says. All shed and stock water is monitored by telemetry.

However water has to be bought in for the five houses on the property at a cost of $12,500 a year.

Now the neighbours are happier, Colebourn's hoping to access their private water scheme for the staff houses, all of which have been upgraded with full insulation and heating.

The farm has 130km of drains and every drain has been redug and tonnes of stumps removed from the paddocks.

Fifteen hectares of turnip crops yielding just 4 tonne/ha are now producing 10 tonne/ha though are likely to be replaced by forage rape, now being trialled. Colebourn doesn't believe turnips are the best crop for peat and says though the green leaf rape is less digestable than turnips, it produces more feed.

In two years 52km of new fencing has gone in.

Maize yields have been significantly improved, with a 27 tonne/ha harvest over 20ha last month.

At the peak of this season the property was milking 1050 cows, 300 kiwi cross and jersey and the balance "friesian type".

Milk production was around 340kg per cow this season and 1020kg milksolids/ha.

Colebourn says the cows, all new to the property and only grass-fed under the receiver, are still a little lazy as they adapt to a new feeding regime. This year 620 tonne of PKE was imported for feed pad use. The farm supplies Fonterra, with some milk committed to the cooperative's guaranteed milk price scheme.

The herd's average body condition score was 4.2 at the end of last month.

The stocking rate is three cows/ha.

The farm has a long herringbone dairy shed which has 68 sets of cups but can only milk between 42-48 cows at a time because it was designed for jerseys not friesian types. Colebourn said the Crafars ran about 1500 jersey cows on the property. Pengxin has installed a new protrack drafting system.

The Collins Rd renovation has been implemented under Landcorp's 40 page feed and business plan, which overlays all the former Crafar farms.

The Collins Rd farm's performance is benchmarked against others in the Landcorp-Pengxin group and against Landcorp's 42 other dairy farms.

By the end of the year 6000 native plants have been introduced at Collins Rd, along with a smart office building and another 32km of fencing.

Pengxin has signed an agreement with Waikato Regional Council to plant out and re-fence 900m of the Mangakotukutuku Stream, a waterway on the farm. Pengxin will contribute $25,850 to the project and the council $11,500.

Colebourn says the Collins Rd operation first showed a profit last season, with earnings before interest and tax this financial year of $542,500. Return on assets was 3.9 per cent. The goal is for a return of more than 5 per cent next year.

Landcorp is the statutory manager for the Collins Rd property and the other former Crafar farms, which are overseen by a board comprising Landcorp and Pengxin directors with an independent chairman Greg Gent, a former Fonterra director and longtime dairy industry leader.

The shared oversight and Landcorp's role as manager were conditions of government consent of the Pengxin purchase. It is understood the conditions will expire in 2017.

Shanghai Pengxin Group chairman and controller Jiang Zhaobai is an occasional visitor to the Collins Rd farm to see progress. His construction, financial services and agribusiness company is investing $18m in the former Crafar farms.

The chairman's interests are represented more regularly at Collins Rd by Auckland-based Xiaobao Du, who has a Massey degree in applied science majoring in agriculture and agribusiness, and is completing a master's degree in soil science.

China-born Du is assistant manager, agriculture at Pengxin subsidiary Milk New Zealand.

Colebourn says he still gets attitude from some Kiwis about Chinese ownership of the farm group, but is enjoying working for Pengxin.

"I see the impact they are making on the community. They have a passion to make things happen. If you can put a business case together, they say 'let's get it done'."

He says Collins Rd will be up to standard by the end of next year.

Colebourn says he likes to leave a turn-key operation when he has finished a farm renovation.

A field day is a possibility next year, he says, after the Mangakotukutuku Stream project is completed, more fencing done, drainage work finished and the fertiliser programme up to speed.

He'd also like to pull out old shelter belts whose roots have not stood up well to peat, and replant hardier trees like maples and she-oaks.

The neighbours may be sad to see him go.

(Shanghai Pengxin subsidiary Milk NZ was named winner of the emerging business award and supreme business award winner at the BNZ New Zealand Chinese business awards last month.)