Fonterra gag on Guiney ‘bizarre’

Jamie Gray

Northland farmer and former Fonterra board member Greg Gent says the co-op’s move to gag former director Leonie Guiney from talking to the media is “bizarre’’.

The legal gagging order issued by Justice Clark in the High Court late on Friday restrained publisher NZX Rural Ltd from using, publishing or disseminating confidential information allegedly received from Guiney.

The injunction also restrains Guiney “from breaching her duties of confidentiality’’ to Fonterra.

Other unnamed media, cited as third respondents, are also prevented from using or publishing any confidential information that may have been received from Guiney.

Media, including the New Zealand Herald, were advised of the orders in an email from Fonterra’s lawyers Chapman Tripp.

Guiney, a South Canterbury dairy farmer and Fonterra shareholder, left the dairy company’s board late last year.

Gent, who served on the Fonterra board from 2001 to 2011, said: “From the outside it looks bizarre — that’s the only way I can describe it . . .’’

In response to an inquiry from the Herald, Gent said farmers were becoming more concerned about the situation with Fonterra’s minority 18.8 per cent holding in China’s Beingmate Baby Child.

“I think that there is major concern about this whole Beingmate thing, but putting it a bit wider than that, there is this whole strategy in China, because obviously there is SanLu, China Farms and this thing [Beingmate] — there’s three,” he said. “It’s serious capital even for a company the size of Fonterra,” he said.

“There is a lot of concern and people are waiting to see how it plays out, basically,” he said.

The failure of joint venture partner SanLu, which was implicated in the melamine adulterated formula scandal of 2007, meant Fonterra had to write off $200 million in the following year.

The co-op has spent about $800m in establishing dairy farms in China but the venture has struggled to turn a profit.

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