Fonterra Co-operative Group Ltd (generally referred to simply as Fonterra) is a large New Zealanddairy company. As a cooperative company, Fonterra is owned by approximately twelve thousand individual farmers throughout the country. Dairy farm near Oxford, New York, July 2001 In many northern-hemisphere countries a dairy is a facility for the extraction and processing of animal milk (mostly from cows, sometimes from buffaloes, sheep or goats) for human consumption. ... A cooperative (also co-operative or co-op) is an association of persons who join together to carry on an economic activity of mutual benefit, in an egalitarian fashion. ... Farmer spreading grasshopper bait in his alfalfa field. ...
Fonterra was established in October 2001 as a merger of the two largest New Zealand dairy cooperatives and the New Zealand Dairy Board. The intent of the merger was to create a single "mega-company" through which to focus all of New Zealand's international dairy trade. 2001: A Space Odyssey. ...
The company has an annual turnover of around US$6.8 billion. It claims to control a third of international dairy trade. Its core business consists of exporting dairy products (95% of its New Zealand production is exported) but it also participates in a number of other agricultural industries - it controls New Zealand's largest retailer of agricultural supplies, and owns ViaLactia, a biotechnology company that focus on the dairy farming sector.
FONTERRA is free to buy Kapiti Fine Foods but fans of the company's gourmet dairy products needn't worry as the dairy giant says it has no plans to mess with a "fantastic" brand.
Fonterra announced plans to buy Kapiti -- which makes speciality cheese, milk and icecream -- and United Milk from Foodstuffs Wellington in November but was waiting for Commerce Commission approval.
It was possible that Fonterra might drop one or two of its three cheese brands -- Mainland, Galaxy and Ferndale -- but it would defintely retain the Kapiti brand, he said.
Fonterra shareholders have made a decision to implement their own rural broadband network rather than rely upon business cases and/or political processes to deliver a public, universal infrastructure sufficient to meet the needs of the company's applications.
It is noted, however, that Fonterra's push to develop the network is driven by its own and farmer demand for applications that already exist, and the business case is justified by use of these existing applications plus applications already in development to share information between individual farmers and between farmers and Fonterra.
Fonterra's investment also indicates that where an overwhelmingly positive benefit exists from an application within a specific sector, if the ability exists to co-ordinate investment, that sector will itself move to implement the infrastructure necessary to support that application.
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