Dairy giant Fonterra posts first yearly loss

NEW Zealand’s biggest company, dairy giant Fonterra, has posted a loss of $NZ196 million ($A179 million) — the first annual loss in its 17-year history.

Last year the cooperative — best known for its Mainland and Western Star brands — posted a $NZ734 million profit.

But in March it reported its first half-year loss on the back of a major write-down on a Chinese investment and a compensation payment over a 2013 botulism scare.

Fonterra yesterday announced a full-year loss for the 2018 financial year, with underlying earnings before interest and taxes also down 22 per cent (to $NZ902 million on slightly increased revenue ($NZ20.4 billion), but lower margins.

It’s left shareholders and farmers “extremely” disappointed.

“There’s no two ways about it, these results don’t meet the standards we need to live up to,” Fonterra interim chief Miles Hurrell said.

“We expected our performance to be weighted to the second half of the year. We needed to deliver an outstanding third and fourth quarter, after an extremely strong second quarter for sales and earnings — but that didn’t happen.”

The company this year wrote down $NZ439 million off a troubled $NZ750 million investment into Chinese food company Beingmate. It also paid out $NZ232 million to French food giant Danone after arbitration over the recall of products in a botulism scare in 2013.

But Mr Hurrell said even without those one-offs, there were other areas of difficulty, including overly optimistic forecasting, high butter prices, increased farmgate milk prices paid to its farmers and increasing expenses in parts of the businesses.