Battle for milk
OPINION: Fonterra may be on the verge of selling its consumer business in New Zealand, but the co-operative is not keen on giving any ground to its competitors in the country.
The launch of Fonterra’s food service business with Indian partner Future Group is described as “a capital light partnership”.
Speaking at Fonterra’s annual meeting in Invercargill today, chief executive Miles Hurrell said the venture combines the co-op’s dairy knowledge and know-how, with Future’s Group’s access to market, established customer base, and strong marketing and distribution networks.
“Combine these two skill sets together and you get more than the sum of its parts.”
Through this partnership Fonterra will be exporting its Anchor Food Professionals products from New Zealand to India, where demand for dairy is expected to grow at seven times the rate of China over the next decade.
“And the reason I raise this as an example is because I believe it highlights the change in our thinking,” Hurrell told about 200 shareholders at the meeting.
“In the past, we thought we needed to have physical assets on the ground in order to succeed. “We also had a wall of milk coming at us – which is not the case today.
“Now, under our new strategy, we are looking to leverage our dairy know-how through partnerships, which will allow us to exploit our intellectual property and enter markets that we might not otherwise have had access to, and to do so in a capital light way.
Hurrell says this is something Fonterra is looking to do more of under its new strategy.
