Fonterra Suppliers Confident in Mainland Dairy Future
Fonterra's 460 milk suppliers in Australia, who will switch to Lactalis end of this month, are unfazed with the impending change.
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."
Matt McRae, a farmer from Mokoreta in Southland who runs a sheep, beef and dairy support business alongside a sheep stud, has been elected to the Beef +Lamb NZ Board as a farmer director.
Ravensdown's next evolution in smart farming technology, HawkEye Pro, was awarded the Technology Section Award at the Southern Field Days Farm Innovation Awards in February 2026.
While mariners may recognise a “dog watch” as a two-hour shift on a ship, the Good Dog Work Watch is quite a different concept and the clever creation of Southland siblings Grace (9) and Archer Brown (7), both pupils at Riverton Primary School.
Philip and Lyneyre Hooper of the Hoopman Family Trust have tonight been named the Taranaki Regional Supreme Winners at the Ballance Farm Environment Awards.
We are not a bunch of sky cowboys. That was one of the key messages from the chairperson of the NZ Agricultural Aviation Association (NZAAA) Kent Weir, speaking at an education day at Feilding aerodrome for 25 policymakers and regulators from central and local government and other rural professionals.
New Zealand's dairy and beef industries say they welcome the announcement that the Government will invest $10.49 million in the Dairy Beef Opportunities (DBO) programme.

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