Westgold Butter Ranked Best Supermarket Butter in Consumer NZ Blind Taste Test
Westgold butter has been named New Zealand's tastiest in a blind tasting conducted by Consumer New Zealand.
Westland Milk Products’ board chair, Pete Morrison has defended bonus payments to chief executive Toni Brendish and other top executives, criticised as having conflicts of interest.
Read: Westland’s biggest shareholder to abstain from vote.
Brendish is reportedly due for $680,000 and others would get up to $360,000 if the deal for the proposed takeover offer by Chinese giant Yili goes through.
In a statement, Morrison said the retention and incentive payments were put in place to cover the whole of Project Horizon – the 12-month process which sought investment partners for Westland and which eventually came up with the Yili deal.
Morrison says the payments only relate to senior executives. No incentives were offered to board members. He says a driving goal was retaining key personnel through a process that could result in significant change. It recognised the additional work required of them by the project and it protected shareholder value. “If senior executives had left during the process it would have presented a picture of instability and that would have undermined possible interest and proposals,” he claims. “It is important to note this is a normal course of action for such programmes.”
Morrison acknowledges that the information should have been included in the scheme booklet, but says this oversight was corrected immediately it was identified.
Potatoes New Zealand and Garden to Table have partnered together to celebrate a versatile vegetable and the people behind it.
Mainland Poultry has confirmed new ownership of its vertically integrated agribusiness with Pacific Equity Partners Gateway (PEP Gateway) now joining current shareholders Navis.
The recently published State of the Industry -Tractors and Machinery 2025 from the Australian Tractor and Machinery Association (TMA), the equivalent of New Zealand’s TAMA, gives an interesting perspective of the industry.
Strong competition and tightening supply have seen wool reach its highest prices paid at auction since 2011.
The Government is funding a feasibility study to investigate what would be required for a successful farmer-led purchase of the McCain Foods' vegetable processing site in Hastings.
A young man just five years out of his Lincoln University degree already has his foot in the door of farm ownership, as equity manager of a large new dairy conversion now taking shape in Mid- Canterbury.

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