Fonterra seeks strong farmer mandate for sale
Fonterra chair Peter McBride expects a strong mandate from farmers shareholders for the proposed sale of its consumer and related businesses to Lactalis for $3.8 billion.
“We had a fantastic line-up of candidates, all of whom could have added to the board, but the successful candidate is Jim van der Poel,” chairman John Luxton told the annual meeting.
Luxton, who has chaired DairyNZ since it was formed in 2007 from the merger of Dexcel and Dairy Insight, is one of three farmer-elected directors due to retire by rotation next year. The other two are Ben Allomes and Michael Spaans.
Turnout by voter was 19.31% with a total of 2719 valid ballots cast. Weighted votes were 525,897,398 giving a 28.46% turnout. DairyNZ was unable to provide the breakdown of votes before this article went to press. The unsuccessful candidates were Donna Smit, Greg Maughan, Murray Jamieson, and Dirk Sieling.
