Philippa Stevenson
Between the lines
Situation vacant: a new breed of leader for the dairy industry.
The notice was posted last week by Dairy Farmers of NZ chairman Charlie Pedersen who added the rider that "those with views and confrontational styles entrenched in the past would probably not be favoured."
Barely had Mr
Pedersen passed on the message gained from two weeks of meetings with farmers nationwide when another spat broke out in the industry.
Fresh from claiming the top prize in the annual export awards, Dairy Board chief executive Warren Larsen suggested that an international arbitrator could be used to help the Kiwi and Dairy Group companies in their troubled merger negotiations.
Bluntly, Kiwi chief executive Craig Norgate warned: "It's not an issue of arbitration and, frankly, Warren has no business commenting."
A day later, Kiwi chairman John Young and his Dairy Group counterpart Henry Van Der Heyden were trying to calm the situation by reporting "positive progress" in that day's talks and predicting they would announce an agreed position with the next two to three weeks.
In an effort to clamp down on speculation no further statements would be made until a decision had been reached, they said.
Both companies have already sowed claim and counter-claim in fertile soil and a period of silence now is unlikely to quieten debate of curiosity. Probably just the reverse.
And to include, by implication, Mr Larsen's arbitration suggestion under a catch-all of "speculation [that] adds nothing to the negotiation process" is nonsensical.
Is the tail wagging the dog? Certainly there is a strong belief among farmers and industry observers that the merger talks, which are key to the mega co-op plan, have become bogged because the interests of the processing companies are overshadowing the needs of their exporting arm.
It is, after all, export markets which the industry has concluded offer the best chance of turning a $7 billion business into a $40 billion one in 10 years.
Rather than unhelpful speculation, it would seem a dereliction of Mr Larsen's duty as head of the Dairy Board if he did not champion the exporter when it appeared to be getting lost in the mire.
It is hardly flagrant to repeat that "we really need to push ahead to get the coordinated effort and maximum clout we will get from the integration of the manufacturing and marketing here in New Zealand. That's what MergeCo is all about, that's what everybody has to focus on."
At the export awards, the Dairy Board was described as an icon of New Zealand's business environment which held "a critical position in the economy, representing 23 per cent of New Zealand's total export revenue."
Whichever way you want to look at it, the operative word there has to be "critical".
