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Matt O’Regan (pictured) steps down in a few weeks.
The birth of Westland Milk Products was an appealing story for all New Zealanders, not just West Coasters. It spurned the overtures of Fonterra and did it the West Coast way.
WMP was built by fiercely independent, resilient, hard working Coasters who live in isolated communities far away from the ‘suits’ of Wellington and Auckland.
The Coast has its own tough culture where jobs have always been scarce, the climate challenging and a feeling that the rest of NZ doesn’t understand their unique ways. Former PM Helen Clark found them hard to deal with and called them ‘feral’.
For many years WPM had been a successful dairy cooperative -- small, innovative and seemingly doing its shareholders proud. But in recent years, WMP extended its tentacles over the main divide and into Canterbury to capture some of the white gold that flowed from the advent of large irrigated dairy farms in that province. At the same it adopted a seemingly logical and commendable strategy to move away from the production of basic milk powders into higher value-add products.
Unfortunately the growth spurt of WMP coincided with the slump in the global dairy market and it seems the company is in financial strife and needs to quickly restructure its operations. There is a lot of behind-the-scenes finger pointing as to why this happened. The previous chief executive and chief financial officer have gone and so have some board members who supported the earlier strategy. Chairman Matt O’Regan also steps down in a few weeks.
It seems the expansion has not gone to plan and it’s being left to the new chief executive, Toni Brendish, to get things back on track. This will not be without financial pain to shareholders and staff and the pride of all West Coasters. While staff will likely suffer the consequences of this mess, the board of WMP needs to take a hard look at their role in this because the buck stops with them. They after all approved the strategy.
Big is not always best: take the likes of Miraka and Tatua. A more conservative strategy, some hard-nosed decisions, downright honesty and the putting aside of egos and ambition by the board are required to restore the health of WMP and the confidence of West Coast dairy farmers.
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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