Fiesta is a cinnamon ice cream with little nubs of churros, the corn chips are coated in white chocolate, and swirls of gooey dulce de leche caramel. Photo / Supplied

New Zealanders eat more ice cream than anyone else in the world.

In this country, we enthusiastically consume 28.4 litres each a year, hands down winners over next placegetter the United States where Americans eat 20.8 litres per person and Australia where each person puts away just 18 litres.

The fondness we Kiwis have for ice cream is a testament to the high-quality dairy products for which the Waikato is renowned, as well as our creativity and production know-how that increasingly includes dairy-free, vegan-friendly deliciousness.

Here in the Waikato, we love our licks, and this week as part of our Mighty Local story series the Waikato Herald gets the scoop on the award-winning Duck Island Ice Cream company, which now has its new factory and headquarters in Hamilton East's Made precinct, an indoor market and eatery destination opening mid next year.

Known for its enormous variety of inspired flavours, the modern-day cult-classic Duck Island Ice Cream is the brainchild of three chefs – Cam Farmilo, Kim Higgison and Morgan Glass.

They started making ice cream desserts when they owned a restaurant in Hamilton. To meet the quickly growing demand for their lip-smacking creations, they opened their flagship Duck Island store in 2015, selling the restaurant not long afterwards to focus on their new business venture.

Today, this Waikato hometown success story also has icecream stores in Auckland and Wellington, while take-home Duck Island icecreams are stocked in supermarkets throughout the country, from Kerikeri in the north to Invercargill in the south.

With ever-changing flavour combinations like Orange Blossom Chocolate Chip and Mango Passionfruit Sorbet, or Roasted White Chocolate Miso and Pecan Butterscotch, Cam says Duck Island's aim is to always keep customers intrigued with innovative new taste sensations, so they come back to try the latest, or for more of their favourites.

With young children of their own, Cam, Morgan and Kim recently decided to let the kids have a go too and launched a nationwide Flavour Creators competition to encourage younger ice cream lovers to dream up and create their perfect ice cream.

By way of giving a little back, they also decided to commercially produce the winning ice cream and sell it in their Duck Island stores as a limited edition with all profits going to the winner's school to help fund innovation, creativity, and science projects.

The inaugural competition attracted more than 6000 entries and was won by Auckland 11-year-old Stirling Maclean with Mexican-inspired ice cream he named Fiesta and describes as a 'party in your mouth'.

Fiesta is on sale in Duck Island scoop shops over the school holidays until October 16 with profits going to Stirling's school, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.

Hamilton 7-year-old Olivia Whittred and 12-year-old Toaiva Faafia from Wellington took the runner-up prizes.

"Our judges worked through all the creations diving into all the different stories, concepts

"Then our flavour developers took to the kitchen here in Hamilton East to bring the shortlist to life, finally selecting the top three creations."

He says Fiesta was not the only Mexican-themed entry in the competition but that it stood out because of the addition of salsa corn chips.

"We just had to give Stirling's invention a crack and we were pleasantly surprised by the salty, crunchy spiciness the corn chips brought to the ice cream – and we just couldn't stop eating it."

Fiesta is cinnamon icecream with little nubs of churros, the corn chips which are coated in white chocolate, and swirls of gooey dulce de leche caramel.

Olivia's creation, Crystal Canyon, has a chocolate ice cream base and features Smarties, popping candy coated in chocolate and cookie dough chunks.

Toaiva's, called Korokoro Koko, is based on a dessert she enjoys when visiting Samoa and includes a milk chocolate base infused with rice and coconut along with chunks of honeycomb, rice bubbles, cacao nibs and chocolate shavings.

As well as selling Fiesta in its stores, Duck Island also made special batches of all three creations and turned up at each pupil's school to treat their classmates to a taste.

Cam describes Duck Island as a small-batch ice cream producer, making from scratch the ice cream bases and the baked ingredients that go into many of the creations.

"Our ice cream is made using the freshest, best quality seasonal ingredients we can source. Along with dairy-based icecreams, we offer an extensive range that is dairy-free and vegan-friendly where we use coconut milk as the base. We have gluten-free and allergy-considerate choices too.

"We're stoked our customers find our specialty ranges can be just as delicious as the dairy-based ice creams."

He says the company's scoop shops offer a rotating choice of 50 flavours at any one time.

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