With 10 days left until the final vote, the NZ First leader hopes to persuade Fonterra\u2019s owners to keep hold of our most famous dairy brands, writes Catherine McGregor in today\u2019s extract from The Bulletin.<\/p>\n
To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday,\u00a0sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Peters\u2019 warning to farmers<\/p>\n Winston Peters has called on farmers to reject Fonterra\u2019s $4.2 billion sale of its consumer brands to French dairy giant Lactalis. In an open letter on Friday, the NZ First leader told farmers the decision would shape the country\u2019s future, cautioning them to think beyond the \u201cshort-term sugar hit\u201d of a cash windfall. He warned that if the deal went ahead, \u201cperhaps we need to revisit the regulatory environment\u201d governing the amount of milk Fonterra must sell to other producers \u2013 a statement he later insisted was not a threat, but simply \u201cParliament\u2019s duty\u201d.<\/p>\n RNZ\u2019s Russell Palmer reports<\/a>\u00a0that his remarks sparked a sharp exchange with Act leader and regulation minister David Seymour, who argued politicians should \u201cleave it to those milking cows\u201d. Peters retorted that he had milked cows for nearly two decades and that Fonterra was claiming its \u201cmonopoly privilege\u201d was its own right to sell. \u201cNo, it\u2019s not. It\u2019s the right of the New Zealand people.\u201d<\/p>\n Fonterra\u2019s big structural shift<\/p>\n As Emma Gleason explains in a useful explainer for The Spinoff<\/a>, the deal Peters opposes is one of the most significant restructures in Fonterra\u2019s 23-year history. The co-operative has agreed to sell its global consumer brands business \u2013 including Anchor, Mainland, K\u0101piti, Fresh\u2019n Fruity and Primo \u2013 to Lactalis for between $3.8 billion and $4.2 billion. The sale includes three New Zealand manufacturing sites and an agreement guaranteeing that NZ milk will still go into the brands\u2019 products for at least the next decade. The move will allow the co-op to focus on its higher-margin ingredients and foodservice divisions, particularly in the booming Chinese market. Dairy farmers are now voting on the proposal and are widely expected to approve it,\u00a0giving them a $2-per-share tax-free capital return<\/a>.<\/p>\n NZ First\u2019s stand against foreign control<\/p>\n Behind Peters\u2019 campaign lies a core belief.\u00a0As Dan\u00a0<\/a>Brunskill writes in Interest.co.nz<\/a>, \u201cNZ First hates being in thrall to corporate interests and foreign ones in particular. It is by far the widest ideological gap between NZ First and the rest of the coalition.\u201d Peters argues that selling the brands built by generations of New Zealand farmers will leave the country\u2019s biggest exporter at the mercy of global buyers, with fewer tools to shape its own economic destiny. It\u2019s not the first time he\u2019s come out swinging against Fonterra: his party made similar objections when the dairy giant sold Tip Top to British-owned Froneri in 2019.<\/p>\n Where once Peters\u2019 approach seemed hopelessly old-fashioned, protectionism is increasingly back in vogue for many countries amid Trump\u2019s tariff shocks and resulting supply-chain anxieties. In this new world order, Brunskill says, \u201ceconomic security has dethroned economic efficiency\u201d as the most important priority.<\/p>\n \u2018A tactical win, but a strategic loss\u2019<\/p>\n Peters has found an unlikely ally in Simplicity founder Sam Stubbs,\u00a0who recently described himself as a \u201ccapitalist socialist\u201d<\/a>\u00a0(\u201cby that I mean capitalism is the best way to make money, with socialism one of the best ways to spend it\u201d). Like Peters, Stubbs believes the sale might be good for today\u2019s balance sheet but is poor strategy for the long term.\u00a0In The Post<\/a>\u00a0(paywalled), he argues that for Fonterra, \u201cthis sale demonstrates either an absence of long-term vision, or an inability to execute it globally.\u201d<\/p>\n Stubbs sees the deal as part of a wider failure of corporate governance in New Zealand, where big firms too often take the \u201cpath of least added-value\u201d and sell our economy\u2019s \u201ccrown jewels\u201d to foreign owners. Fonterra\u2019s plan, Stubbs writes, may be a \u201ctactical win, but a strategic loss\u201d in which the local dairy giant ends up feeding the growth of a foreign company. Whether farmers share that view will be clear on October 30, when the co-op\u2019s owners cast their final votes on the sale.<\/p>\n Related:<\/p>\n Subscribe to +Subscribe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With 10 days left until the final vote, the NZ First leader hopes to persuade Fonterra\u2019s owners to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,7225,7226,111,6042,139,69,12242,14465],"class_list":{"0":"post-89781","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-dairy-industry","10":"tag-fonterra","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newsletter","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-nz-first","16":"tag-the-bulletin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}