Milky idea gives chance for trip

CAMERON BURNELL/The Taranaki Daily News

MILKING IT: New Plymouth student Lisa Fairclough, 17, who is in a milky New Zealand final.

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Taranaki student Lisa Fairclough has been handed an opportunity – and she's milking it for all it's worth.

The New Plymouth Girls' High School pupil is one of 11 secondary school students from throughout New Zealand who have good ideas for things to do with milk.

Lisa's team has come up with a milk-based moisturiser and insect repellent called Rellebalm that contains extracts from the native kawakawa leaf.

If her team's idea is considered good enough she could soon be representing New Zealand at an international junior trade challenge in Singapore during August.

Lisa was one of 72 top high school students who participated in the New Zealand teams of the FedEx/Junior Achievement International Trade Challenge, in which they were set the task of coming up with milk-based products to export to South-east Asia.

The budding entrepreneurs, all aged between 16 and 19 and put into teams, presented ideas that ranged from milk-based protein shots high in nutrients, to a clever product that mixes milk powder with spring water and is drunk through a straw that coats the liquid in different flavours, to a tablet made from milk protein that kills mosquitoes.

"My team had four people from Auckland, one from Christchurch, one from Whakatane, and me," she said yesterday.

"They had a vote and selected me to represent our team, so now I've got to go to a weekend workshop in Auckland next month where they'll select the final six to go to Singapore. Wow, if we get that far it'll be the trip of a lifetime," she said.

Last year New Zealand took out second place in the big competition. This year the Kiwi representatives will be competing against seven other Asia-Pacific countries and their 42 representatives.

- © Fairfax NZ News