Tatua chairman Dr Alan Frampton will retire after the company's annual meeting in October.
Frampton, 73, chaired his final board meeting last week before announcing the company's exceptional payout of $5.60/kg of milk solids.
One of dairying's most respected leaders, Frampton has represented the industry at various levels formore than 30 years. He was a member of the Dairy Board from 1973 to 1993 and has been a director at Tatua since 1982, and chairman since 1990.
Frampton said he was looking forward to life without the constant pressure of the corporate dairy sector. But he planned to stay involved as a dairy farmer and a Tatua shareholder.
Tatua has been riding high in recent years, consistently paying its farmer shareholders more than Fonterra.
The decision to focus on the value-added-product end of the dairy sector has paid off for the company, which now specialises in complex dairy protein ingredients. Frampton played an influential role in steering Tatua down that path.
Dr Barry Richardson, chief executive of New Zealand's other independent milk company, Westland Milk Products, said Frampton had "considerable strategic vision."
Frampton was a logical thinker and a great supporter of innovative products and new technology, he said.
If it had not been for an inspiring Dairy Board consultant who visited Frampton's family farm in the 1950s, he might never have left.
Instead, after becoming intrigued with the science behind the production gains he was seeing, he left the farm in Morrinsville in 1958 and headed to Massey University.
There he exceeded his own expectations, completing a masters degree in agricultural science. He later completed a doctorate in agricultural economics at Cornell University in the United States.
During his academic career, Frampton was dean of the faculty of agriculture and horticultural sciences at Massey.
He left the academic world in 1983 to work as a consultant.
