The plant is planned by a new company, Oceania Milk Ltd, and the resource consents it needs to build and operate it will be heard by a joint three-member Waimate District Council and Environment Canterbury panel on December 21 and 22 in Waimate.
When asked by the Otago Daily Times if there was a connection between the proposed dairying development and the new milk plant, Oceania chairman Keith Turner said: "There is no connection between us - none whatsoever."
Dr Turner said that would compromise the approach Oceania wanted to take to its project.
The company was looking for established suppliers "very close by" the 5ha site for the plant on the corner of State Highway 1 and Cooneys Rd, about 4km north of Glenavy.
Oceania was not building a plant on the basis of intensive indoor dairying.
"It is not part of our plan at all," he said.
Dr Turner said that, to his knowledge, Oceania had not been approached by those involved in developing the dairy farms to become suppliers to the Glenavy plant.
"I would have expected to have heard.
"They [the developers] all know me and I would have expected them to approach me," he said.
At this stage, Oceania had not drawn up requirements for suppliers to meet.
"Our broad principle is to be a very high quality producer of milk products and to achieve certification between the farm, factory and product," he said.
The dairy farm development proposed by three companies would result in up to 17,850 cows in the Ohau-Omarama areas, housed in cubicles for eight months of the year and 12 hours a day for four months.
