Alliance group elects new blood to board

Photo / Nicki Harper

Meat Industry Excellence (MIE), the group formed to try and improve the fragmented New Zealand meat sector, has succeeded in getting one of its candidates on the Alliance Group board.

The MIE-backed Don Morrison, of Gore, was elected to the board at today's annual meeting in Dannevirke.

Alliance chairman Murray Taggart, from Oxford, who had retired by rotation, was re-elected.

About forty-nine percent of eligible votes were exercised in the directors' election.

Taggart said the turnout was a significant improvement over recent years' turnouts and reflected increased interest in the election issue.

``It is encouraging to see the turnout which demonstrates that our shareholders are very much interested in who represents them at the board table,'' he said in a statement.

In 2012 the turnout for the directors election was 25 per cent compared with 42 per cent in 2011 and 30 per cent in 2010.

The board is in the process of appointing an independent director to replace the position vacated by Owen Poole.

Taggart said the board was working with independent executive search consultants to identify suitable candidates.

The unsuccessful candidate was sitting director Jason Miller of Southdown, who was first elected to the board in 2007.

The annual meetings of Alliance and Silver Fern Farms - the country's two biggest meat producers - were seen as being a possible turning point for an industry grappling with overcapacity issues.

This season's lamb kill is expected to be sharply down on last season's, due mostly to last summer's drought, but also because of changes in land use as more farms convert to dairy.

Southland's Alliance and Dunedin's Silver Fern _ both farmer-owned co-operatives which account for just over half of the industry _ have in the past talked of the need for rationalisation.

MIE has put its weight behind West Otago farmer Richard Young and Gisborne farmer Dan Jex-Blake for Silver Fern, which holds its annual meeting on December 18.
Both companies have in the past been merger prospects but an attempt to marry the two in 2008 failed.

The industry is estimated to have lost about $200 million last year.

Alliance reported an operating profit of $10.9m for the September year, after suffering a $57m loss the previous year.

Silver Fern Farms, the country's biggest meat processor, said it had hired consultants PwC to undertake a review of the company after it suffered a $28.6m loss for the September year.