Southern man who rescued lame duck

Owen Poole's leadership and focus cemented the company's recovery after it came perilously close to collapse. Picture / Otago Daily Times

There is a charming ruggedness about Owen Poole. The retiring Alliance Group chief executive is a paradox of traditional southern hospitality shaped by a lifetime of knocks working in the tough and unforgiving meat industry.

Typical of southern men he is loath to discuss himself, turning away and looking out the window of his central Invercargill office when asked personal details.

He is gruff and straight to the point, but polite, friendly, hospitable and thoroughly likeable.

There is no doubting his ability after a decade at the head of one of the country's largest businesses, completing the transformation of Alliance from lame duck to arguably one of the strongest meat companies, on paper at least, in the country.

Poole does not lay claim to such grand praise, saying it was a team effort.

The reality is that a decade of his leadership and focus has cemented the company's recovery after it came perilously close to collapse in 1991 following a dark period in the industry's history of questionable asset purchases, ownership changes and industrial unrest.

Rick Bettle was appointed chief executive when the company entered survival mode in 1991, with Poole at his elbow on a three-month contract.

Their task was huge.

In 1991 the co-operatively owned Alliance had recorded a $152 million loss, had shareholders' funds of $102 million, 18 per cent equity and $346 million in debt.

According to the book Meat Acts, banks had lost confidence and wouldn't provide additional finance. A financial adviser was appointed to watch over the company.

The Agenda for Change plan was invoked, involving the selling of non-core assets and business rationalisation.

More than 1400 jobs were lost as the Ocean Beach, at Bluff, and Kaiapoi plants were closed and operations at two Southland plants, Mataura and Makarewa, were scaled back.

Alliance went back to its farmer shareholders and investors to successfully raise $40 million over two years to ensure the company continued to trade.

By 1994-95, Alliance was back in the black and in 1995 Poole succeeded Bettle. His three-month term in 1991 was to become a 10-year tenure as chief executive.

Thirteen years after those dark days, Alliance last year recorded a before-tax profit of $40 million, cash flow of $94 million, $279 million in shareholders' funds, equity of more than 70 per cent and low debt.

That is history and Poole prefers to look forward, but it is a grim scene-setting and hugely influential period for the company.

He has seen lamb transformed from being a commodity to one of the most internationally prized food products, occupying just 4 per cent of the international meat protein market.

That has come about through an industry push to reposition lamb as a high-value delicacy, a project so successful that it has surprised everyone in the agricultural industry.

Lamb accounts for 85 per cent of Alliance's turnover, and in recent years Mr Poole has instigated a number of projects to ensure it gets the number, and just as importantly, the type of lambs it needs.

Breeding trials have been funded to find sires and dams that produce the best lambs with the meat in the right places with farm management systems so ewes can have three lambings in two years.

This reflected market demand for year-round supply of lamb and was also the reason Alliance last year opened a works at Dannevirke.

Poole's confidence that the world can't get enough New Zealand lamb is tempered by concerns about compliance costs, red tape and labour shortages, which he said were forcing the export of jobs overseas.

Some casings and skins were being processed in China with lamb carcasses further processed in Canada and the United States.

"It's not particularly good, but that is the reality of it," he says.

Poole has spent nearly a lifetime in the meat industry and witnessed first hand its turmoil and latterly the prosperity that it has provided his shareholders.

Now he intends to live at a slower pace, working from his Wanaka base, with a bit of fishing and a couple of company directorships to keep him busy.

- OTAGO DAILY TIMES