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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.
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.
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