Revamped Fonterra to be ‘more capital-efficient’
Fonterra chair Peter McBride says the divestment of Mainland Group is their last significant asset sale and signals the end of structural changes.
Kotahi, founded by Fonterra and Silver Fern Farms, works with exporters and shipping containers to ensure an efficient supply chain.
The company has 10-year partnership with Maersk Shipping.
Kotahi chief executive David Ross says the agreement comes with a commitment to each other "to ensure capacity is there for exporters on our platform".
"We realised last year was tough with the constant slippage, so the plan going into this year was to do something different," he says.
"This is to ensure we would get the schedule integrity and the capacity. We need to not put the stress on the supply chain that we've seen in the previous 12 months."
Ross says Maersk has committed to increase capacity to New Zealand this year.
He says while the port congestion doesn't go away, the new schedule will be able to handle that congestion and be on time. He adds that over the last few months, the schedule integrity of key Maersk services in NZ is back to over 80%.
"That just changes everything. The boxes [containers] are coming in when you need them, you are booking the vessels you want and whole flow starts to come back."
When American retail giant Cosco came to audit Open Country Dairy’s new butter plant at the Waharoa site and give the green light to supply their American stores, they allowed themselves a week for the exercise.
Fonterra chair Peter McBride says the divestment of Mainland Group is their last significant asset sale and signals the end of structural changes.
Thirty years ago, as a young sharemilker, former Waikato farmer Snow Chubb realised he was bucking a trend when he started planting trees to provide shade for his cows, but he knew the animals would appreciate what he was doing.
Virtual fencing and herding systems supplier, Halter is welcoming a decision by the Victorian Government to allow farmers in the state to use the technology.
DairyNZ’s latest Econ Tracker update shows most farms will still finish the season in a positive position, although the gap has narrowed compared with early season expectations.
New Zealand’s national lamb crop for the 2025–26 season is estimated at 19.66 million head, a lift of one percent (or 188,000 more lambs) on last season, according to Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s (B+LNZ) latest Lamb Crop report.

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