Open Country opens butter plant
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.
The 60c drop announced yesterday is a response to the conditions that all New Zealand dairy companies are experiencing at the moment, Westland chief executive Rod Quin says.
"While the season is only just underway, we have always maintained a monthly revision process to provide shareholders with the most up to date forecast possible," Quin says.
"The reduction is driven by the falls in prices across the globe and the continued high value of the New Zealand dollar."
While last week's dairy auction saw an overall price drop of just 0.6%, Quin noted that the skim milk powder price ¬– which represents a substantial proportion of Westland's production – dropped 12%; there is still lacklustre demand from China and stock levels in distributor and customer warehouses was reportedly high.
"Higher prices last season caused a growth in milk supply growth in Europe, the USA and New Zealand, giving customers more options," he says.
Quin says the reduced payout will cause farmers to review their budgets; Westland's board and management were very conscious of the stress this will put on some suppliers.
"We'll be monitoring the situation and working closely with shareholders to help ensure they have the resources and tools to manage their way through this," he said.
"Westland will also continue its strategy to grow its capacity to produce higher value nutritional products such as infant formula. Our traditional reliance on bulk dairy commodities such as skim milk makes us more vulnerable to the cyclical swings of the international dairy market. Our recently announced investment in a $102 million nutritionals dryer at Hokitika will give us the capacity to shift more of our production to this end of the market where profits are higher and opportunities to lift pay-outs are better."
