Fonterra have lost their social licence in NZ
Fonterra’s latest profit announcement and the sale of its consumer brands have reignited a long-simmering debate: has New Zealand’s dairy giant abandoned its social contract with the very country that built it?
Fonterra profit climbs to $750m as it lifts milk price and dividends
Rising profits while domestic pressure builds
Fonterra has reported a 2.8% lift in first-half net profit to $750 million, increased its interim dividend and confirmed a special dividend of 16 cents a share following the sale of its consumer business.
Fonterra milks its monopoly position to screw us the domestic consumer from eating our own harvest from our own land.
Fonterra have lost their social licence in NZ
They have destroyed all the value added brand to just produce milk powder as a ingredient filler for the mass produced shit food industry…
Selling the value-added future
Fonterra’s farmers vote in favour of $4.2b Mainland sale to Lactalis
Fonterra’s farmers have voted strongly in favour of the sale of its Mainland consumer and related businesses to France’s Lactalis for $4.22 billion.
The co-op said 88.47% of the total farmer votes were in support of the sales.
Voting, which started on October 7, closed today at a special meeting.
The co-op is targeting a tax-free capital return to farmers of $2 per share from the transaction.
Analysts estimate the deal is worth about $400,000 in total for an average farmer.
A $400,000 Tax Free Payout given to selfish Dairy Farmers who used their monopoly position to build these brands only to flog them off in favour of basic bitch milk powder production for the heavily manufactured food industry!
Fonterra trash their social contract while selfish Dairy Farmers betray NZ!
Environmental and social backlash intensifies
Fonterra doesn’t care about New Zealand. That’s Greenpeace Aotearoa’s message following the confirmation of sale of Fonterra’s consumer brands this morning.
Greenpeace spokesperson Sinéad Deighton-O’Flynn says, “Fonterra’s CEO Miles Hurrell has shown that he views New Zealand as nothing more than a milk powder factory, creating low-value products to ship overseas for use in Mars Bars.”
“People can’t afford to buy butter, their water is contaminated with nitrate and E. coli, and the worsening impacts of the climate crisis are being felt across the country. Meanwhile, New Zealand’s worst climate polluter has made a killing selling off its consumer brands to French dairy giant Lactalis. Fonterra is milking us dry and selling us all out.”
“While Fonterra makes $4.2 billion from the brand sale, New Zealand’s integrity as a fair and socially responsible country is being whittled away by the impacts of intensive dairying.”
Two thirds of rivers and lakes are too degraded to swim in or collect kai from, and many rural communities can’t drink the water coming out of their kitchen tap because of nitrate contamination from intensive dairying.
Fonterra is also New Zealand’s worst climate polluter, producing massive amounts of superheating methane gas.
“Fonterra is driving catastrophic climate change.” says Deighton-O’Flynn. “Already this year we’ve seen multiple extreme weather events hitting rural communities hard, and unless Fonterra supports farmers to move away from its intensive farming practices, these events will get worse.”
Over the long weekend, New Zealanders were hit by yet another extreme weather event in the South Island, made more likely due to climate change.
“We all want a stable climate to grow food, access to safe drinking water, and a secure future for our kids. But Fonterra clearly doesn’t care about New Zealanders. Instead of throwing a lifeline, and helping dairy farmers to transition away from destructive intensive dairying, Fonterra is prioritising lining the pockets of its executives.
“Any claims that this sale is good for New Zealanders are built on the fallacy of trickle down economics. The proceeds from the brand sale aren’t going to help New Zealanders struggling to pay for butter at the supermarket or recovering from storm damage, the only thing trickling down in this economy is nitrate and E.coli.”
Why New Zealand consumers are priced out
…how many times do I have to spell this out to you sleepy hobbits?
We created a monopoly in the form of Fonterra to maximise price negotiations on the global market, but the flipside of that is that me as a consumer in NZ, for a product made in NZ, I’m competing with 500 million middle class Chinese who want this product.
NZ only has a population of 5 million, we can never compete for price against 500 million middle class Chinese.
Why should we be forced to pay the same price as the Chinese Middle Class can afford?
The Chinese Middle Class is forecast to grow to 787 million!
On top of that, this butter is created by a cow which takes water, pollutes water and generates climate warming emissions.
So this product, that I’ve already paid an environmental price in the manufacturing of, also costs me an arm and a leg price wise, because I’m competing with 500 million middle class Chinese?
Why are we paying a price that is imposed upon us by a middle class market that is many times larger than our total population?
Synthetic dairy could upend the entire model
Also consider the impact of synthetic milk production that would cripple our economy overnight!
How close is research to synthetic milk powder?
Current progress
Precision fermentation: Companies like Perfect Day (US), Imagindairy (Israel), and Remilk (Israel) are already producing dairy proteins (casein, whey) using genetically engineered microbes. These proteins are identical to those in cow’s milk.
Pilot products: Ice cream, cheese, and yoghurts using synthetic milk proteins are already on the market in limited quantities.
Milk powder challenge:
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Fresh liquid milk analogues are progressing faster because they need fewer processing steps.
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Milk powder requires scale and drying infrastructure — you need not just proteins but fats, sugars (lactose alternatives), and minerals in the right balance, then spray-dry them without losing functionality.
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As of 2025, no company has achieved full commercial-scale milk powder equivalents suitable for use in all the same applications (e.g., infant formula, bakery, confectionery).
Timeframe estimates
Industry analysts predict proof-of-concept synthetic milk powders within 3–5 years, but mass-scale, cost-competitive production is probably 10+ years away.
Bottlenecks: scaling fermentation vats, energy cost of spray drying, regulatory approvals, and consumer acceptance.
Dairy is a sunset industry and our decision to destroy the brands and sell them off means we are simply basic bitch milk powder producers and we lose all our edge the moment synthetic dairy can replace organic milk powder.
Our basic bitch milk powder is used as an ingredient filler for the heavily manufactured food industry, a food industry that produces fat, sugar and salt laden crap food.
Do you all honestly believe hand on heart that that food industry will draw a line in the sand for our organic basic bitch milk powder?
How stupid is that?
Why have we allowed the corporates to take the kai from our nation and make us compete against far larger markets who will pay more than the domestic population in NZ can afford?
I’m sick of Fonterra’s excuses.
We created a Monopoly for them and these greedy fucks have trashed their social contract with Kiwis!
Watch as these French owners use NZ’s brand and then replaces our product for theirs while trading on our brand!
The huge pay off from selling our brands will be reinvested into the right wing astroturf influencers as Dark Ag money to manipulate the sleepy hobbits into entrenching their interests.
Get off your knees Kiwi, the Dairy Farmer ain’t your mate!
The real risk isn’t just that Fonterra has lost its social licence — it’s that by abandoning value-added production and doubling down on commodity exports, it may have also gambled away the long-term future of New Zealand’s most important industry.
In the advent of synthetic milk products 100 year old consumer brands made from authentic milk will likely command premium prices. That opportunity is gone now.
Twenty years ago a mate did IT at Fonterra and was getting paid 50% more than elsewhere in the industry he reckoned the farmers had no understanding of the weight of SF. Staff fat.
Back in 1981, Kenneth Cumberland was assuring New Zealanders by way of his TVNZ Landmarks series that our position on the sheep’s back — wool was our biggest export in the mid-1960s — was secure. Come March 1982, we hit ‘peak sheep’ at over 70 million. It’s about 25 million now, thanks to the increasing market penetration of artificial substitutes for industrial grade wool such as nylon and polyester, despite ads of the time that claimed wool was a fibre “man can never re-create.” Dairy farming will be the next piano out the window, for precisely the same reason, plus methane and other environmental and ethical issues. And sheep farming, and all those who said it was secure in the face of synthetic fibres, and rumours of its coming collapse exaggerated, is the precedent.
True, but that tells us that the whole “back-to-nature” movement that started in the 1960’s has also flamed out, which has huge implications for the environmental movement.
Bottom line: if the natural product costs more then people will dump it, no matter what they say.
The real question is what New Zealand will replace our primary-producer industries with, because I see nothing on the horizon.
Oh well, population at 1.5 million by 2100, consisting of Thiel-like billionaires supported by a servant class whose kids flee to Australia as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, American owned Watties closes down its frozen vegetable processing in Nz and hundreds of arable farmers wonder what to do with their flat fertile Canterbury farmland. More dairy farms are on the way.