The appointment of Toni Brendish as Westland Milk Products chief executive made history as she is the first female to lead a New Zealand dairy company.
The first woman to head up a New Zealand dairy company is delivering results
It has taken Westland Milk Products chief executive Toni Brendish a year to start to turn things around but she is delivering on her promise to return the co-operative to profitability.
When she took the reins in September 2016, the Hokitika-based co-operative had been struggling to deliver to its suppliers and markets. Westland posted a net loss after tax of $14.5 million for the year ended July 2016.
When Toni Brendish took the reins of Westland Milk Products, the Hokitika-based co-operative had been struggling to …
supplied
When Toni Brendish took the reins of Westland Milk Products, the Hokitika-based co-operative had been struggling to deliver to its suppliers and markets. Backed by the board, she is delivering on her promise to return the co-op to profitability.
Backed by her board, which had a new chairman and was itself going through a period of intensive change to strengthen and upskill the company’s governance leadership, she established a new finance team to work with her. She identified that it was costing Westland more to process its «bucket of milk» compared with other dairy companies in New Zealand.
Since then, she and her team have embarked on a campaign to reduce costs and improve efficiencies. The result has been the removal of many millions of dollars in costs from the business and a focus on driving revenue. The result was a break-even profit before tax for the year ended July 2017.
«We are on track to achieve our target of $78m in revenue upside and savings (equivalent to $1.20/kgMS) through increased efficiencies and reduced costs across key areas of our operation,» Brendish says.
Toni Brendish says the strategy is still the same – to produce value-added products – but to do it differently and more efficiently.
«We focused on: Making it right first time, efficiencies in transportation and logistics, getting our sales and IT right, improving procurement processes and contracts, and getting much better at sales and operating planning.»
But, Brendish says, the cost savings achieved by Westland could not be a one-off.
«The efficiencies and savings have to be embedded as part of the way we work; this has included a review of our strategy to ensure it was fit for purpose for the dairy market and, more specifically, the future of Westland.»
Westland has 398 suppliers/shareholder owners and is New Zealand’s second largest milk company.
Read More: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/dairy/100671432/milk-company-back-in-the-black