Fonterra trims board size
Fonterra’s board has been reduced to nine - comprising six farmer-elected and three appointed directors.
Three Fonterra directorships are coming vacant, six candidates are in contention. Two of the three sitting directors, John Monaghan and David MacLeod, are seeking re-election; long-time director Jim van der Poel is retiring.
The four new candidates are MyFarm director Grant Rowan, South Canterbury farmer Leonie Guiney, Cambridge farmer Garry Reymer and South Waikato farmer and professional director Gray Baldwin.
All have completed candidate assessment panel (CAP) interviews. Roadshows, where candidates will be quizzed by shareholders, start in in Invercargill on October 28 and work their way north to finish at Whangerei and Pukekohe on November 4.
Rowan says he’ll bring a “commitment to the success of Fonterra and make it the dairy cooperative, milk processor and marketer of choice for all New Zealand dairy farmers.
“I’m a straight shooter and independent thinker,” he told Rural News. “I have a strong understanding of dairying and a life-long involvement in the dairy industry, having worked my way up the dairy farming ladder from farm management and share milking to farm ownership. I also have all the competencies required of a Fonterra director.”
The key issue he sees for Fonterra is demonstrating “the compelling long-term benefits that flow from remaining a strong and united cooperative”.
Guiney says she’d give Fonterra’s board an “absolute commitment to and understanding of the true comparative advantages that have contributed to genuine wealth creation for New Zealand farmers.
“That starts with ensuring we enhance, or avoid inadvertently [eroding], the pathways that allow young energetic people to grow equity from milking cows.
“Continuing to attract these entrepreneurs with the work ethic and skill to farm the peaks and troughs of the commodity cycles to our industry, and to our Fonterra, is key to our future success.”
Baldwin is an award winning farmer, having won the Supreme Award in the Waikato Ballance Farm Environment Awards 2009, but he’s probably better known for his roles as a director of LIC, Ballance Agri-Nutrients, agritech company Regen and Trinity Lands.
“When I narrowly missed election to the Fonterra board in 2011 I resolved to improve my governance skills…. During the past three years I have strengthened this skill,” he writes in his candidate profile.
“My election to the LIC board in 2012 gave me a second set of valuable insights into how successful farmer-owned companies are governed.”
If elected Baldwin says he’ll reduce his directorships to fully commit to Fonterra.
For Reymer, the key issue for Fonterra is to make sure it gets the fundamentals in New Zealand right and remains a co-op.
“It’s not about the strategy – that’s important, but senior management have a good handle on that. What we should be talking about is... what supports that strategy inside our borders here in New Zealand. Because if we don’t get that right we won’t have Fonterra in 10 years – or at least not as a farmer-owned cooperative.”
But if that sounds like anti-TAF rhetoric, it’s not, he says. “TAF’s great. But the job’s only half done. We need to complete the job.”
MacLeod chairs Taranaki Regional Council and is a director of PKW Farms, and Monaghan is also a director of Wellington’s Centre Port and trustee of Wairarapa Irrigation and Eketahuna Charitable Trusts.
