New Zealand Wool Prices Hit Highest Levels Since 2011 Amid Tight Supply and Surging Demand
Strong competition and tightening supply have seen wool reach its highest prices paid at auction since 2011.
Former PGG Wrightson (PGW) chair Lee Joo Hai, who is fighting charges filed under Singapore securities legislation, is leaving the rural service company’s board.
Hai, who stepped down as chair earlier this month, won’t be seeking reelection at PGW’s annual shareholders meeting later this year.
A PGW filing with the New Zealand Stock Exchange last week said Hai was resigning “in order to eliminate the ongoing distraction caused due to media and market attention regarding the securities regulation matters that he is defending in Singapore”.
While Hai said he did not consider that those matters affected his capacity to remain a PGW director, he nevertheless felt that it was in the best interests of the company that he step down.
Hai has also stepped down from the PGW audit committee effective immediately; acting chair, U Kean Seng will join the audit committee.
On June 30, PGW announced that Hai had been charged in Singapore under certain Singaporean securities regulation in respect to potential lapses in relevant disclosures related to a Singaporean listed company, Hyflux Limited. Hai is a director of Hyflux. The PGW board decided the related investigations did not compromise the performance of Hai’s duties in relation to PGW and that he was to continue as board chair.
However, a week later the company announced that Hai was stepping aside as chair but will remain as a board member. It had determined that it would be “in the best interests of PGW for Seng to assume the role of acting chair while the investigations and charges relating to Hai remain ongoing”.
According to PGW’s website, Hai has been a director of the company since 2017 and chair since July last year. Hai was appointed an independent director of Agria Corporation in 2018. Agria, a global agricultural company, owns 44% of PGW.
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson says his party – NZ First - isn’t opposed to the “trade element” of a free trade deal with India.
The managing director of a company seeking to build a solar farm in Canterbury says receiving fast-track approval is a “really positive outcome”.
Retiring MP and dairy farmer Mark Cameron is blasting the Green Party for proposing to ban the use of synthetic fertiliser and cutting cow numbers.
A huge reduction in ACC claims from on-farm accidents over the last five years is due to thousands of small, practical decisions being made in sheds, yards, paddocks and around kitchen tables across the country, says Safer Farms ambassador Lindy Nelson.
Wayne and Ange Moxham of Horowhenua have just been named as Fonterra's top organic performer for milksolids. As well as providing organic milk to Fonterra, the couple also sell Udderly Organic milk to more than 100 outlets in the region and are embarking on another exciting venture producing organic gelato. Reporter Peter Burke went along to see their farming operation.
Certainty and a clear understanding of the needs of rural communities is a critical outcome in the series of government reforms that are taking place at present.

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