The pair did not deliver on what they initially said they were going to do and that was something he was “pretty open about”.
“When I joined, the financial tide was so swift running against the company, our ambitions around consolidation with Alliance [Group] were too far gone”.
Nine and-a-half years on, he was proud of a “really magnificent” company with a great strategy and a balance sheet to execute on that strategy.
The company was “extremely lucky” to have had chief executive Dean Hamilton, who was there at the time of the merger, and current chief executive Simon Limmer, who had also put together a “fantastic top bench”.
“As farmers, we have no appreciation of what these people do on a daily basis. They sweat blood for us. It’s like being in a drought 24/7,” Jex-Blake said.
Young said the thing that stood out for him about Silver Fern Farms was the people.
“No one here goes to work in the morning to p... a farmer off. They’re all there to do the best they can to deliver the result for us on-farm. Don’t ever think they are there to muck you around.”
Following director elections, Anna Nelson (King Country) and Rodney Booth (Canterbury) were announced last week as successful farmer-elected candidates.
Nelson comes from a South Island hill country background and now runs a 1450-ha breeding-finishing business in the King Country with her husband Blair, his parents, and their three children.
Booth, a sheep and beef farmer and incoming Dunfield Farming managing director stood on a campaign that included being a voice for farmers with a “shareholder first” approach and improving returns.
The fully committed supplier and shareholder with SFF is a strong supporter of the co-op model.
His family’s fully irrigated finishing operation in Central Canterbury has 20,000 stock units.
Jane Taylor, who joined the board as an independent director in 2013, retired from the role in March. As chair of the audit, risk assessment and mitigation committee, she had a huge influence on SFF as a board member and sub-committee chair by championing the company’s position on sustainability, Hewett said.
Cassandra Crowley is a new independent director. Silver Fern Farms garnered praise at the meeting for the effort it had put into governance development.
In his review, Hewett reflected on this year’s 75th anniversary when a small group of Otago farmers decided to form a co-operative called the Primary Producers Co-operative Society, or PPCS.
The objective was simple; they wanted greater oversight and involvement in the processing and marketing of their livestock which, up until that point, was kept at arm’s length.
“Typical of the can-do attitude that has come to characterise New Zealand farmers since things happened reasonably quickly; it was only around one month from their decision to form a co-operative that the first procurement of stock was secured,” he said.
It was a relatively primitive operation which involved record-keeping that was six weeks behind and 39kg handwritten ledgers that needed to be lugged around the office.
That first procurement of lambs was walked 42km along a dusty gravel road before being railed from Cromwell to the meat works. Unsurprisingly, their average weight was only 13kg.
“Things have clearly changed a lot in farming since that time and, alongside our name change to Silver Fern Farms in 2008, a lot has changed in our co-operative as well.
“In 1948, the bulk of our exports went to British consumers in relatively simple cuts. Nowadays, we export to over 60 different markets around the world and with thousands of different product specifications,” he said.
One thing that had not changed was the core objective and attitude of that initial group of farmers which still formed the way the company’s board of directors went about their role, he said.
