PGG Wrightson Revenue Tops $1.1b as Profit Jumps 46%
After delivering a strong financial year, rural trader PGG Wrightson says the coming months will depend on customer confidence and weather.
The latest Global Dairy Trade auction results have delivered a boost to dairy farmers.
With the global market awash with milk, dairy prices recorded its third consecutive rise, with the GDT price index rising 6.7%.
The whole milk powder price, used as a benchmark to set the farmgate price, rose a whopping 5.3% to US$3,614/metric tonne, a three-month high.
Skim milk powder performed better, rising 10.6% to US$2,874/MT, just a few dollars shy of recording a three-year high price.
NZX head of dairy insights, Cristina Alvarado, says the GDT event delivered the strongest average index increase since March 2021 when the first event of that month recorded a 15% gain.
“The scale of this move materially exceeded market expectations and reflected a combination of seasonally tightening supply from New Zealand, concentrated regional demand, and constrained availability across several key commodities, rather than a sudden shift in global milk production trends,” she says.
She notes that whole milk powder prices were similarly supported by seasonal supply tightening. European WMP production has been materially lower year to date, limiting alternative origin availability and reinforcing buyer reliance on New Zealand supply.
“While futures markets had priced in modest gains, the reduced spot volumes offered at this event pushed prices beyond pre-event expectations.”
Four years since it was first detected in New Zealand, researchers and growers now know much more about management of maize pest fall armyworm (FAW).
The Government has announced it will pause key parts of Waikato Plan Change 1 (PC1) in a decision that is set to give Waikato farmers a reprieve from new consenting and farm-planning requirements while the wider resource management system is overhauled.
OPINION: The time has come for the Government to back the organic sector.
Plan ahead and be patient. That’s the message to farmers and horticulturalists from the chairman of the NZ Agricultural Aviation Association, Kent Weir.
The industry is crying out for graduates with agricultural related degrees.
While GPS and guidance have become the norm and yield mapping and variable application continues to gain traction, most agricultural machinery manufacturers continue to expand their technology offerings, amalgamating the vast amounts of data being collected to streamline real-time and ongoing management decisions.

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