Getting Westland back on track

For several months it’s been known Westland is in serious financial trouble and six months ago Brendish was hired to sort out the problems. Now she is conducting a major review of the company and has already hinted that major changes are afoot, including making some staff redundant and reducing the overall numbers employed.

Brendish, an Australian, has worked in fast-moving consumer goods for most of her career. Most recently she worked for the French multinational Danone, which specialises in infant formula.

She told Rural News that while going through the interview process for the chief executive role she was made aware of the problems facing the cooperative. Brendish says the WMP board was upfront with her about the state of the company and wanted someone to ‘transform’ it.

“I didn’t come in with rose tinted glasses. The board told me they had created some investments and these hadn’t been executed as well as they should have been,” she says.

“It’s a bigger job in terms of the operational efficiencies we have to get. It is fair to say Westland had a bad year last year, but when I look back it was probably coming for a couple of years earlier because of the operational challenges that haven’t been addressed. We have been making very good investment of strategic assets, but as for the rest of the business, we haven’t kept our pencil as sharp as we needed to from an efficiency point of view.”

Brendish says WMP shareholders in the cooperative feel completely gutted at the performance of the company and they have every right to feel that way. Westland is disappointed it has not performed and this must be fixed.

But she warns – and has told shareholders – there is no silver bullet fix to the situation.

“There is no light switch that somebody needs to flick on so that we magically close the gap between ourselves and the other cooperatives. We have to go back and get it fixed right,” Brendish explains.

“For shareholders, there will be some pain this year. We have been transparent that we won’t be matching the Fonterra price by closing the gap but everything we are doing is making sure we hit the new season well,” she says.