There's been a breakthrough in the time it takes Australian fresh milk to be available to consumers in China.

After a year-and-a-half of negotiations between Chinese quarantine authorities and the Australian dairy industry, Dairy Co-operative Norco, in northern NSW, will now be able to send fresh milk to Chinese consumers within seven days.

Until now, it's taken between 14 to 21 days for Australian milk to pass quarantine protocols before it could be sold in China. Those protocols have in the past dramatically reduced the milk's shelf life overseas.

As a result of the negotiations and a successful trial shipment last month, Chinese quarantine authorities have acknowledged the testing regimes in place in Australia are a duplicate of their own, and they are willing to fast-track the quarantine process.

Norco now has the potential to export up to 20 million litres of fresh milk to the Chinese.

"When we first started this project, it was thought it would be impossible to get the milk into China without losing too much use-by-date," Norco chairman Greg McNamara said.

"Originally we thought it was going to be 14 to 15 days before it would actually be cleared, and there would only be a three to five day potential for it to be used, which was too short."

Last month, Norco undertook a successful trial shipment of almost 1,000 litres of fresh milk.

Mr McNamara says Norco will be building on that trial and hopes to export 20 million litres of fresh milk to China in the next 12 months.

"It's an exercise of 'don't take it too fast', let's work it slow and make sure we deliver on our promise and everyone is satisfied," Mr McNamara said.

"We're not talking about a product that's going to be sold cheaply on the market.

"It could be somewhere between $7 and $9 (a litre).

"It's going to high-end consumers that are actually worried about the health of their children and trying to ensure they consume healthy products."

Between potential growth in the Chinese market and the company's new contract to supply Coles, Mr McNamara says Norco has already had to bring on 54 new farmers to keep up with demand, and will need more in the near future.

"Any additional sales increases will need to be supplied by new farmers," he said.