Fonterra’s ‘$43m man’ Theo Spierings gets new CEO job in Europe

Former Fonterra chief executive Theo Spierings. Photo / Dean Purcell

Former Fonterra chief executive Theo Spierings, who was paid $8 million a year before the dairy company announced disastrous financial losses in 2018 and 2019, has a new CEO job in Europe.

The Dutchman, who earned $43m in his seven years heading Fonterra, starts at Netherlands-based listed livestock feed company ForFarmers in January. His appointment, to be formally voted on at an extraordinary general shareholders meeting in January, is for one year.

ForFarmers 2021 annual report suggests Spierings’ pay packet will be some way short of what Fonterra paid him.

The current chief executive in FY2021 was paid a total of €1.6m ($2.7m) including special payments and variable remuneration.

ForFarmers, which provides cattle, sheep, pig and poultry nutrition to farmers in the Netherlands, UK, Germany, Poland and Belgium, recorded revenue of €2.7 billion ($4.5b) in FY21.

Spierings, appointed to Fonterra in 2011 by former chair Sir Henry van der Heyden, left the big co-operative in August 2018.

Fonterra in FY18 posted a loss of $196m, its first loss ever. In FY19 it announced a net loss of $605m, attributed to writedowns totalling $826m, mainly in offshore businesses.

Spierings was paid $8m in the two years before he exited. His base annual salary was $2.5m, the balance was bonuses.

Fonterra revealed in 2019 that Spierings had collected a final payment of $4.67m under an incentive plan put in place in 2016 and 2017. The plan has since been discontinued. This payment brought Spierings’ total earnings in his time at Fonterra to $43m.

Spierings was succeeded as chief executive by Miles Hurrell. The company, New Zealand’s biggest business with a 79 per cent market share of the country’s raw milk, is on a financial turnaround journey with a reset business strategy focusing on New Zealand milk, instead of building overseas milk pools.

On returning to the Netherlands from Fonterra, Spierings started a consultancy, The Purpose Factory, which says it helps companies transform and do business in a sustainable manner.

ForFarmers has been listed on the Euronext Amsterdam since 2016.

Started as a co-operative in 1896, the company says it is “an international organisation that provides complete innovative feed solutions for conventional and organic livestock farming”.

It offers compound feeds, blends and concentrates, and lists its specialties as young animal feed, minerals, additives and transition feed products. It also sells seeds and fertilisers.

With two other Netherlands companies, it claims to have a 75 per cent market share in northwest Europe.

In a statement to the Netherlands stock exchange, ForFarmers’ supervisory board chair said Spierings had “impressive international experience in the dairy industry as well as great drive and expertise to help the agricultural sector be future-proof and at the same time become more environmentally sustainable”.

While the appointment has to be formalised by shareholder vote, the statement said Spierings would start on January 1.

Before joining Fonterra, Spierings was CEO at Friesland Foods and led its merger with Campina in 2008.

FrieslandCampina is an international dairy business based in the Netherlands. Like Fonterra, it is a co-operative.