Fine weather, more milk, record year

Biotech investments are starting to show through for Livestock Improvement.

Fine weather and a longer milking season have helped the listed breeding company Livestock Improvement to a record profit.

The Hamilton-based farmer co-op, which is listed on the NZAX and can only be traded by farmers, yesterday announced a $7.6 million net profit for the year to May 31, up 43 per cent from $5.3 million the previous year.

Revenue rose 6 per cent to $110.5 million.

The company, originally a spin-off from the New Zealand Dairy Board, provides farmers with consultancy services, artificial dairy breeding programmes, herd testing, recording and information services. It also supplies services to other agricultural sectors and exports dairy semen.

Chairman Stuart Bay partly credited the positive result to the longer milking season and fine weather.

"Farmers are buoyant in their farming activities and they use our products and services for longer and they use more of them."

He said the company, under new chief executive Mark Dewdney, was expanding its range of services.

"The company is looking at leveraging its skills and business competencies into other areas. That is logically expanding across other species."

Its newest division - a system that assists farmers identifying individual animals - had proved popular with lifestyle block farmers and was used for beef and deer.

The company's biotechnology investments were starting to show.

"It takes a number of years before the benefits flow through," said Bay. "If you find an exciting gene and you produce a young bull, it will be five years before his daughters are in milk and you know how good he is. So it's a long pipeline and we are in that pipeline at the moment."

The company has a dual share structure, with a co-operative control share held in proportion to patronage and investment shares tradable among co-operative control shareholders.

It will pay a 24.5c dividend per investment share and a 8.5c dividend per co-operative control share.