For decades Kiwis have lamented about not getting into higher end manufacturing and branding of market leading products. Its even blamed for our low productivity. The old joke is that we export logs to China and they sent them back to us, but in the form of card-board and wooden boxes full of imports, where the price they charge us for the boxes is five times what we charged them for the logs. Sir Paul Callaghan even wrote a whole book about it, called, "Get off the Grass: Kickstarting NZ's Innovation Economy". He was a NZ physicist, founding director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials & Nanotechnology at Victoria University, a Professor of Physical Sciences & President of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance. The government's Callaghan Innovation was named after him.
Now Fonterra is determined to get NZ back into the grass. The dairy giant has confirmed plans to sell its consumer arm, including brands like Anchor, Mainland Cheese, and Kapiti Ice Cream. It could be a trade sale, whereby a foreign company buys the products & brands. For Fonterra not to be able to make a success out of such brands, in a world desperate for organic, free range, environmentally products, which many folks do associate with NZ, is a national disgrace. To be clear, its looking like it won't be long before the symbolic heart of our nation - the "Mainland" - the South Island - will cease to exist in the sense our iconic Mainland Cheese will become Mainland China. Aside from its interest in these products, some have touted Nestle of Switzerland as a buyer. What's that saying? That the Swiss can do high end and the Kiwis stay in the grass and do low end, because the Fonterra Execs don't know how to do high end? Sir Paul Callaghan would be horrified at their ineptitude.