Fonterra has been hitting the headlines on numerous fronts this week – from taking its dispute about the companies it must supply milk to, to the Supreme Court, to being named the world’s biggest milk processor.
Earlier this week Fonterra was named the biggest milk processor in the world by the International Farm Comparison Network – the second straight year Fonterra received the title.
However, Fonterra spokesperson Nick Stride says the result needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.
“We don’t dispute their figures but these things vary according to how you calculate it – it’s liquid milk equivalents which I think they’re using then you can calculate it in tonnes or kg/ms collected.
“In actual sales volumes Nestle is much bigger than we are.”
Also, this week Fonterra announced it would be taking its dispute over having to supply raw milk to the Grate Kiwi and the Kaimai Cheese Company to the Supreme Court.
Under the Dairy Industry Restructuring Raw Milk regulations Fonterra is obliged to supply other dairy companies with up to 50 million litres of milk a year.
However, Fonterra is arguing both the Kaimai Cheese Company and Grate Kiwi process their milk at Open Country’s processing plant in Waharoa – and therefore do not meet the definition of being processors themselves.
This argument was rejected by the Court of Appeal in March meaning Fonterra’s next stop is the Supreme Court.
“Well the essential case is that we are arguing that they are not, we have to supply other processors, but they’re not processing, they’re taking dairy milk off us but they’re not processing it themselves.
“So we’re arguing they don’t meet the definition of a processor if they’re not processing it themselves.
“But the courts, you know, at various times have agreed and disagreed with us.”
Nick Stride says the Supreme Court appeal will be the last.
Meanwhile, Fonterra says that despite reports this week that a multi-government department investigation has been launched to investigate how the dairy giant charges for its milk, in reality, nothing has changed.
“No that’s not a new enquiry – MAF has said they would look at how we set the milk price some months ago, April at least, and we’ve been assisting them since then.”
Nick Stride says all that has changed is that the public learned that Treasury and the Ministry of Economic Development were also involved in the enquiry.
