The milk bandit of Alexandra is back – and now the mayor has weighed in

As if 2026 couldn’t get any stranger, the milk bandit of Alexandra has returned with a new weapon in his arsenal.

It was more than two years ago that Poppy Prendergast had her first chilling encounter with the mystery milk bandit of Alexandra. Working at Royalburn Station, the Central Otago farm co-owned by Nadia Lim, Prendergast would often stop for diesel at the self-service fuel stop on MacLean Road. Refuelling before dawn, she remembers the spooky scene well. “It was really dark and foggy, and the milk was just sitting there on the diesel pump,” she says. Two litres of Meadow Fresh Calci Strong, choc-o-block flavour, half finished.

Next came a spate of hastily abandoned banana milks, one of which was left on the pump for so many days in sub-zero temperatures that the bottle began to bloat dramatically. The milk bandit’s palate appeared to be rapidly expanding too – they would soon be leaving a dairy-based degustation including Puhoi Valley mocha, Mammoth protein fix iced chocolate, and Barista Bros double espresso. Although there is no bin at RD Petroleum, Prendergast notes that a caravan rest-stop and the Alexandra dump are just minutes away.

“It was just such a ridiculous amount to litter,” she says. “But then it just kept escalating.”

As the batches of half-drunk milks continued to grow in number and frequency, reaching fever pitch with up to six bottles at once being left every few days, RD Petroleum chief executive Craig Fitzgerald told RNZ that the culprit was likely a male delivery driver for an undisclosed company. What was less clear, however, was his motive. “Whether he drinks half a bottle of each one and then leaves them there because he doesn’t want to take them home for rubbish or whatever, I don’t know,” said Fitzgerald. “It’s a bit bizarre.”

Prendergast too remained perplexed by the mystery milk dumps, even after she stopped working at Royalburn and wasn’t able to monitor the fuel stop as regularly. Adopting the unofficial role as lead detective on the case, she fielded tips from the community that milks were also being spotted in Oamaru, Gore, and even just across town at a similar fuel stop on McKeown’s Road. “I 100% knew that one on McKeown’s Road was a copycat,” she sagely recalls. “There’s no way it was our guy, because he didn’t leave the milk on the diesel pump.”

The trail ran cold in 2025, with Prendergast receiving just one milk bandit sighting from her own mother – “more Puhoi” – and logging the intermittent mention in the Alexandra community page. Forced to go back to the drawing board, Prendergast had time to develop a new theory about the pattern of behaviour. “I realised it mostly happened in the winter,” she says. “So I’m thinking he’s got his heating up high in the truck, it’s making his milk grotty, and then he is like ‘what am I gonna do with this ungodly amount of milk from the last six hours?’”

Sure enough, as the days grew shorter and the frosty winter arrived down south in 2026, so too did the mystery milks at the MacLean Road fuel stop. “It’s back,” said one of Prendergast’s Snapchat informants, sending through a trio of Puhoi Valley black forest 300ml bottles at varying levels of fullness, tucked alongside an unopened strawberry Lewis Road Creamery. Elsewhere on Instagram, a local captured a brood of Puhoi Valley chocolate milks, some dramatically toppled over, with the simple caption “milk” followed by a raised eyebrow emoji.

“I was actually really angry,” says Prendergast of the milk bandit’s return. “I got goosebumps because I was just so mad – how can he be doing this again?”

Once her initial rage had subsided, she realised that there was a thrilling new detail in the new batch of evidence – behind the Puhoi milks was a 700ml bottle of The Collective kefir pourable probiotic yoghurt. “I was immediately like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s the kefir one, which is a very expensive yoghurt.’” Indeed, The Collective kefir retails at $7.75 a bottle, but what does it tell us? “I think the assailant probably has gut issues because of all this dairy, and yet he’s still discarding the probiotic yoghurt which is probably the best thing for him right now.”

Bad microbiome or not, Prendergast remains unsympathetic towards the milk bandit. “How many times can you litter like this before it becomes something bigger? They have a caretaker who checks in once a day, and he’s just constantly cleaning up after this guy and taking all this milk away.” And in a cost of living crisis, she adds that wasting that much milk feels particularly pointed. “We have a big community pantry here with chilly bins all through it. Why don’t you just not open and slurp all over each one and instead give some away?”

It is a sentiment echoed by Central Otago mayor Tamah Alley. “At a time when many households are feeling the pinch of the cost of living, this does feel like a particularly expensive way to make a statement, especially when it involves only drinking half the product and leaving the rest behind,” she says. “The littering is disappointing and doesn’t reflect the pride our community takes in looking after our place. We’d much rather see that milk enjoyed properly (preferably to the last drop to hit their protein targets) and then recycled appropriately.”

While the milk bandit remains at large and newly armed with pourable probiotics, Prendergast says she is not giving up on her inquiries and would like to confront him in person. “I’ve been plotting to do a stakeout and take shifts with people,” she says. “I want to confront him with a rubbish bag and say, ‘can you please pick that up?’ and, like, watch him put it in the bin. There’s gotta be some accountability here.” And based on her previous modelling, she says the winter temperatures plummeting further in July will only bring more abandoned milks.

“He’s starting off soft, like the first time around,” she says. “But I worry that it could get worse before it gets better again.”