Friday, 30 June 2017 14:55

Ringing changes at Westland milk

Written by 
Westland Milk Products chief executive Toni Brendish. Westland Milk Products chief executive Toni Brendish.

Westland Milk Products chief executive Toni Brendish has been keeping her promise to get the company back on its feet after a couple of troubled financial years.

This saw the departure of the previous chief executive and chairman.

Brendish told Dairy News she has reconfigured the senior management team with the appointment of a new general manager in China, Garry Yu.

A Chinese national, he has wide experience of the China market, Brendish says.

Most recently he was the managing director of Griffith Foods, Greater China, and prior to that worked in Coca Cola China, Unilever Bestfoods, Rich Products and Nestle China in sales, marketing, R&D.

“Garry Yu has significant local Chinese experience,” Brendish says.

“And we have a new chief operations officer joining us next month, a new chief financial officer joining us in August, and we have put in a new supply chain general manager, Raul Elias-Drago.”

Brendish says WMP has been working on sales and operating planning and she has appointed a new person in this role, reporting directly to her.

Her focus has been on closing the gap and ensuring a competitive payout to producers in the range $6.40 - $6.80/kgMS.

“We are comfortable with that number looking at what we have done in the business. The team is working incredibly hard to get those costs under control so we feel confident about what is happing.”

Brendish wants WMP to create more added value products and to promote its West Coast heritage and location.

More like this

Strong growth for Yili's NZ operations

Chinese dairy giant Yili Group says its New Zealand operations are on track for strong revenue growth in 2025 after recording significant year-on-year growth for the first half of the year.

Top dairy CEO quits

Arguably one of the country's top dairy company's chief executives, Richard Wyeth has abruptly quit Chinese owned Westland Milk Products (WMP)

Wrong, again!

OPINION: This old mutt well remembers the wailing, whining and gnashing of teeth by former West Coast MP and Labour Agriculture Minister Damian O’Connor when Chineseowned Yili took over the troubled dairy company Westland Milk a few years back.

Milk price certainty

Westland Milk has reaffirmed its commitment to pay farmer suppliers 10c above Fonterra farm gate milk price for the following two seasons.

Featured

B+LNZ launches AI assistant for farmers

Beef + Lamb New Zealand has launched an AI-powered digital assistant to help farmers using the B+LNZ Knowledge Hub to create tailored answers and resources for their farming businesses.

National

Machinery & Products

JDLink Boost for NZ farms

Connectivity is widely recognised as one of the biggest challenges facing farmers, but it is now being overcome through the…

New generation Defender HD11

The all-new 2026 Can-Am Defender HD11 looks likely to raise the bar in the highly competitive side-by-side category.

» Latest Print Issues Online

Milking It

Buttery prize

OPINION: Westland Milk may have won the contract to supply butter to Costco NZ but Open Country Dairy is having…

Gene Bill rumours

OPINION: The Gene Technology Bill has divided the farming community with strong arguments on both the pros and cons of…

» Connect with Dairy News

» eNewsletter

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter