Trinity Lands CEO Peter McBride steps down, moves to board position

Peter McBride is stepping down as CEO of a major agribusiness, the Trinity Lands charitable trust. Photo / George Novak

Trinity Lands chief executive Peter McBride this week swaps the job for a director’s seat on the board of Zespri’s biggest single shareholder and a major Fonterra milk supplier.

McBride, chairman of dairy exporter Fonterra and a former chairman of kiwifruit global marketer Zespri, has been on the faith-based charitable trust’s management team for 24 years, the last seven as chief executive.

From this week he will become a director of Trinity Lands, which farms 7400ha of dairy land in the south Waikato and Bay of Plenty, supplying Fonterra with eight million kilograms of milk solids a season from 16,000 cows.

The trust, an amalgam of three charitable trusts, diversified into kiwifruit in 2000. Today it has a total kiwifruit canopy covering 178ha, 152ha of which are planted in Zespri’s best-selling export fruit, SunGold. The trust produces three million trays of export kiwifruit a season. The trust’s annual revenue is $111m.

New chief executive will be David Turner, currently executive director of Bay of Plenty sawmilling company Sequal. Turner has a finance and banking background. McBride is a director of Sequal.

McBride was last month appointed independent chairman of Sydney Markets, a co-operative of fresh produce growers, wholesalers and retailers, operating from 33ha in Sydney’s inner-west Flemington.

The markets company includes Sydney’s iconic Paddy’s Markets and involves more than 137 fruit and vegetable wholesalers, 400 growers and retailers, and 180 flower producers and sellers.

Sydney Markets’ 2023 financial year revenue was A$63.5m ($67.2 million) and its profit A$4.5m ($4.7m).

McBride, originally from the Waikato but a Bay of Plenty resident since 1978, is the grandson of Robert Auld, who founded two of the Trinity Lands’ legacy charitable trusts, Longview and Lichfield Lands. The third legacy trust was the Hillview Trust. Putāruru-based Trinity Lands’ foundations date back to 1951. Profits from its businesses go back into local and community projects.

McBride told the Herald investment in community support ventures “spins my wheels”, and he’s particularly proud of Trinity Lands latest funding project, the Trinity Koha Dental Clinic.

It offers free dental treatment from volunteer dentists in mobile clinics to poor communities in the south Waikato, Bay of Plenty and the East Coast.

The project is a partnership with YWAM Ships Aotearoa. YWAM, or Youth with a Mission, operates the Tauranga-based vessel YWAM Koha, which carries supporters and cargo to remote Pacific Island communities. Custom-built shipping containers on the ship’s deck serve as dental, medical, surgical, pharmaceutical or classroom facilities.

Trinity Lands has so far given $100,000 to the dental clinic and pledged $400,000 to YMAM Ships.

Andrea Fox joined the Herald as a senior business journalist in 2018 and specialises in writing about the dairy industry, agribusiness, exporting and the logistics sector and supply chains.