Fonterra AMENA region update with Kelvin Wickham

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Fonterra's environmental achievements are being turned into a competitive advantage with customers in the AMENA region, says Kelvin Wickham.

Fonterra has over 4000 people working in the AMENA region which comprises of Africa, Middle East, Europe, North Asia and the Americas.

"We're pretty much following the sun around the clock," Wickham, who is the CEO for AMENA at Fonterra, told The Country Sport Breakfast's Lee Piper.

Fonterra's annual financial results were released a couple of weeks ago, and one of the highlights was the co-op delivering on its target to improve energy efficiency at its New Zealand manufacturing sites by 20 per cent.

AMENA turned information like this into opportunities for consumers who were "hungry" for supply chain transparency, Wickham said.

"In particular if you look at Europe and the US ... they're really looking at the brands on the shelves and wanting to know what's behind them."

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"So a lot of our customers therefore are seeing a pressure on reducing that environmental footprint on the ingredients that go into their final products. So their competitive advantage and their license to operate has some pressure."

"So if we can demonstrate to them the total footprint of those consumer products on the shelf is down - it gives them a competitive edge."

Fonterra had a real competitive advantage with its on-farm efforts in New Zealand as well, Wickham said.

"Generally we can say that our milk on-farm is about one third of the global average in terms of greenhouse gas footprint versus our European and North American milk production."

"So we've got this wonderful milk from the best grass in the world down there in New Zealand."

AMENA's aim was to work out how to utilise this positive environmental information to help key customers achieve their goals, Wickham said.

Also in today's interview: Wickham talked about how the AMENA region contributed to Fonterra's annual financial results through its Medical Nutrition and Sports and Active Lifestyle products.