The Great Lockdown

CHAPTER 6Fonterra

By Karen Smyth (Fonterra GM Risk Assurance)

About Fonterra

We are a cooperative owned by nearly 10,000 farming families. Our farmer owners have long realized the strength of coming together as a co-op and how it can enable them to take their milk to the world. From humble but pioneering beginnings, we're now the largest exporter of dairy products in the world. Through our global grass-to-glass supply chain, we collect, process, store, ship, and distribute more than 4 billion MT of nutritious dairy products to 140 markets. Our 22,600 employees across the globe believe dairy is well placed to play an important role in helping feed the world's growing population, which by 2030 will have another 1 billion mouths to feed.

Dairy is an integral part of our food – as an end product like milk or yogurt, or as input for products like cheese in pizza. It is essential in both food service and packaged food categories. Given its intrinsic presence, dairy is a microcosm of the food industry, with dairy consumers’ preferences influenced mainly by the same trends affecting the food sector.

We work with our farmer owners on a cooperative approach. Each day we pick up and process their milk, and we have an extensive network of support people who can assist farmers with everything from farm productivity, profitability, and environmental improvements to milk quality, safety, health, and animal welfare.

In recent years, the dairy industry has been at the center of the carbon emissions ...