Milk price certainty
Westland Milk has reaffirmed its commitment to pay farmer suppliers 10c above Fonterra farm gate milk price for the following two seasons.
The chief executive-elect of Yili-owned Westland Milk Products Richard Wyeth is looking forward to the challenge of running the company.
For the past 11 years, Wyeth has headed up Miraka, the highly successful Maori-owned dairy company based in Taupo.
He says he wasn’t actively looking for a change but says the opportunity to move was timely and a chance to advance his career.
Wyeth says Westland is a really iconic company and when he went down to Hokitika for the 75th celebrations of company, he was suitably impressed.
“I was really impressed with the people on that visit. It’s a good sized business with 700 staff and it’s a real challenge to get involved. The operation is unusual in that the milk collection area extends over 600 kilometres and that is a challenge in itself. It’s phenomenal when you think of the distance that milk has to be collected and the different climatic conditions within that area,” he says.
Wyeth says his experience in dealing with China in his present role at Miraka was probably a factor in being headhunted for the role at Westland.
He’s been travelling to China for 13 years now and he finds it quite ironic that the first dairy company he visited when he went to Mongolia was Yili.
“I have always been super impressed with Yili as a company. Their attention to detail in China is second to none,” he says.
Wyeth is under no illusions that West Coast dairy farmers have high expectations about what he might do for the company, which has struggled over the years.
His first task is to look at the strategy of the company and get a good understanding of the business before thinking about making changes. H
e says Westland has had challenges with capital structure, but this has now been resolved.
He says the milk price is also locked in.“I am looking forward to the opportunity to execute the new strategy and see how I can build the business,” he says.
Wyeth will start with Westland at the end of February and says, while he intends to base himself at the company’s office in Christchurch, he plans to spend a fair bit of time on the coast.
Rural trader PGG Wrightson has revised its operating earnings guidance, saying trading conditions have deteriorated since the last market update in February.
It's been a bumper season for maize and other supplements in the eastern Bay of Plenty.
Leading farmers from around New Zealand connected to share environmental stories and inspiration and build relationships at the Dairy Environment Leaders (DEL) national forum in Wellington last month.
AgriZeroNZ, a joint venture fast-tracking emissions reduction tools for farmers, is pouring $5 million in a biotech company to develop a low emissions farm pasture with increased productivity gains.
Fonterra is teaming up with wealth app provider Sharesies to make it easier for its farmer shareholders to trade co-op shares among themselves.
Te Awamutu dairy farmers Doug, Penny, Josh and Bayley Storey have planted more than 25,000 native trees on the family farm, adding to a generations-old native forest.