Fonterra FY26 Results: $9.69 Milk Price, $3.4bn Profit
Fonterra has unveiled its annual results for the 2026 financial year, posting $27 billion in revenue and close to $20 billion returned to New Zealand farmer owners and unit holders.
Energy company Contact is closing its 44-megawatt Te Rapa power station in June next year.
The Te Rapa plant, operating since 1999, is a gas-fuelled co-generation plant, providing steam and electricity to Fonterra's Te Rapa dairy factory, and directing surplus electricity back to the grid.
Contact says its contract to supply Fonterra with electricity expires in June 2023. Fonterra will acquire the plant's auxiliary boiler and will continue to use these assets for its dairy operations beyond June next year, but the gas turbine used to generate electricity at Te Rapa will be retired.
Contact says the decision to close the plant will reduce its long-term scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 20% per annum.
Contact chief executive Mike Fuge said it had been an unsettling time, but it was good to be able to provide the 16 staff at Te Rapa with more certainty.
"It is business as usual until June next year, and everybody in our team at Te Rapa will be looked after. After the power station closes, there will be some opportunities for people to move across Fonterra's Te Rapa team or be redeployed elsewhere within Contact."
The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners (the College) and Hauora Taiwhenua Rural Health Network are calling for investment in a proposed new training pathway for rural GPs, warning that many rural practices are struggling to recruit while a large share of the existing workforce nears retirement.
Federated Farmers has called on Central Otago District Council (CODC) to drop or vote down a plan to truck sludge from Alexandra and Cromwell to farmland near Lauder, warning it would compound an "outrageous" situation created by a separate council's decision weeks earlier.
Synlait has swung to second-half profit as operations stabilise, but the dairy processor still posted a $75.4m annual loss.
LIC shareholders have elected a new North Island representative to the co-operative's Board, along with five representatives to its Shareholder Reference Group (SRG), following the company's Annual Meeting held in Invercargill.
Farmers across parts of Southland and South Otago are continuing to deal with difficult conditions after a prolonged run of wet weather, with pressure building around feed supply, stock management, pasture damage, farm infrastructure and everyday workloads.
Federated Farmers says it welcomes Labour's commitment to reviewing the Sharemilking Agreements Act, calling on other major parties to do the same.
OPINION: It seems Canterbury processor Synlait is still in the doldrums.
OPINION: Get offside with New Zealand First leader Winston Peters at your own peril.