Silver Fern receives an offer it can’t refuse

No wonder the deal between Silver Fern farms and Shanghai Mailing took so long to conclude, but from all appearances it was worth waiting for. Not that you would necessarily think so, if you read about the disappointment of some shareholders and the MIE group about the board’s unwillingness to give serious consideration to an alternative farmer offer of $40 million or some of the business commentary.

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Turning point for red meat sector

The Shanghai Maling Aquarius offer for 50% of Silver Fern Farms may not be the restructuring catalyst that MIE and some shareholders of both cooperatives were hoping for, but it certainly presages a dramatic change in the industry’s dynamics.

Cooperatives and private companies work best in agriculture

Good company performance demands clarity of purpose which is defined and monitored by a board of directors elected or appointed by the shareholders. There are five main types of company ownership structure that are or have been represented in New Zealand’s agricultural sector and each has advantages and disadvantages.

Australia faces similar problems with Chinese investment

The front page of Saturday’s Weekend Australian showed a disconsolate Chinese dairy investor standing on a Gippsland, Victoria, property on which his company Ningbo Dairy Group had hoped to farm 1000 dairy cows. The plan was to house the cows in barns and produce milk for bottling in a A$6 million bottling plant on another property for airfreight as fresh milk to China.