Data sharing initiative wins national award for saving farmers time
The work Fonterra has done with Ballance Agri-Nutrients Ltd, LIC and Ravensdown to save farmers time through better data connections has been recognised with a national award.
Fonterra's revenue for the nine months of this financial year touched $15 billion, up 1% on the same period last year.
Sales volumes were 16.6b liquid milk equivalent (LME), up 4%. However, normalised EBIT was down 9% to $522 million.
In ingredients, sales volumes for the first nine months were up 10% to 16.3b LME, gross margin was down to 8.6% from 9.6% and EBIT was down $64m to $602m.
In consumer and foodservice sales, volumes were down 1% to 3.8b LME, gross margin was down to 22.8% from 23.6% and normalised EBIT was down $62m to $266m.
Chief executive Miles Hurrell says the New Zealand ingredients business is performing as expected but Australia ingredients continues to face challenges and it is taking longer than planned to lift performance in some parts of the co-op’s consumer and foodservice business.
“Due to the challenges in Australia ingredients and tightening relative price differences between reference products, or those products that inform the farmgate milk price, and non-reference products – that’s all our other products -- we are reducing the forecast full year normalised EBIT for the whole ingredients business to $645 - $725m, down from the $750 - $850m range we shared at our interim results.”
Consumer and foodservice improved its performance in the third quarter relative to the first half.
“Due to our performance in Latin America we have lowered our forecast normalised EBIT from $475m - $525m to $400m - $430m for this part of the co-op,” he says.
The China foodservice business recovered as demand for butter bounced back, helping pricing and in market inventory return to more normal levels.
There was good demand for Anchor Food Professionals UHT culinary cream and the Waitoa UHT factory had worked hard to get shipments to China foodservice customers.
The co-op’s Oceania consumer and foodservice business continued to perform well with Australia’s spreads category, including Western Star butter, contributing significantly to gross margin.
Managing director of Woolover Ltd, David Brown, has put a lot of effort into verifying what seems intuitive, that keeping newborn stock's core temperature stable pays dividends by helping them realise their full genetic potential.
Within the next 10 years, New Zealand agriculture will need to manage its largest-ever intergenerational transfer of wealth, conservatively valued at $150 billion in farming assets.
Boutique Waikato cheese producer Meyer Cheese is investing in a new $3.5 million facility, designed to boost capacity and enhance the company's sustainability credentials.
OPINION: The Government's decision to rule out changes to Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) that would cost every farmer thousands of dollars annually, is sensible.
Compensation assistance for farmers impacted by Mycoplama bovis is being wound up.
Selecting the reverse gear quicker than a lovestruck boyfriend who has met the in-laws for the first time, the Coalition Government has confirmed that the proposal to amend Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT) charged against farm utes has been canned.
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