Friday, March 29, 2024

Whineray climbs his first Fonterra peak

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One thousand litres of milk a second are flowing into Fonterra’s processing plants at the height of the spring milk peak, chief operating officer Fraser Whineray says. The newly re-energised dairy industry senior executive has more gee-whiz statistics.
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The full flow is around 82 million litres a day, similar to last year, a farm pick-up every nine seconds, a tanker discharged every 22sec and a container door closed every three minutes.

Those numbers are achieved by his 10,000-plus workforce in 30 plants nationwide, now all working round the clock to collect and process the milk intake.

Former Mercury chief executive Whineray joined Fonterra seven months ago, in the middle of the covid-19 lockdown, and hasn’t yet been able to visit every NZ site, nor obviously the ones off-shore.

Fortunately, he worked in the old Dairy Board as a post-graduate trainee after qualifying as a chemical engineer at Canterbury University and saw most aspects of the dairy industry, here and abroad.

NZ’s pioneering work on the then-emerging whey protein products captured his imagination.

Fifteen years away from the industry in ascending executive roles whet his appetite for a return when predecessor Robert Spurway moved to Grain Corp in Australia.

Whineray has a bigger task – NZ manufacturing, the global supply chain, sustainability, innovation, research and development, information technology, safety, quality and regulatory matters.

The redistributed senior management team under chief executive Miles Harrell has three offshore divisions – Judith Swales, Asia-Pacific; Kelvin Wickham, Africa, Middle East, Europe, North Asia and the Americas; and Teh-han Chow, Greater China.

Operationally, Whineray leads the onshore remainder.

Farmer ownership and exporting to fuel the economy from the platform on which he stands to “choreograph the company”.

An unseen group is used to illustrate his point – Milk TestNZ at Te Rapa does 25,000 samples a day from all over the country with 40 staff members and delivers farmers and Fonterra the results within 24 hours of collection.

“When Air New Zealand cut flights because of covid the milk samples still had to get through, not just for payment of fat and protein, but for somatic cell counts, antibiotics and the like,” he said.

“After my absence from the industry, it blew me away to see how few staff members did so much testing.”

Perhaps the biggest challenge of his familiarisation period has been contingent planning for covid-19 effects as the season developed.

“We need to know how to cover all the skilled roles, such as lab testing, tanker driving, processing, warehousing and distribution, under covid restrictions,” he said.

“Covid has raised the need for seasonal labour and a stand-by workforce.

“We are very pleased to be at the peak without covid in the community, although we are not out of the woods.”

Fonterra maintains PPE and precautionary measures throughout the company – daily temperature scans are carried out on all staff members and visitors at head office, for example.

Barring the usual minor power outages and equipment breakdowns, peak processing has been smooth.

“Well, it looks smooth on the outside, but there is a huge amount of work below the surface,” he said.

Whineray is already planning for the winter shutdown next year, mainly plant refurbishments and repurposing, wastewater treatments and energy conversions like Te Awamutu’s recent changeover from coal to wood pellets.

Although no one expects Fonterra’s peak demand to rise above mid-80ML/day, and for new facilities to be needed, technological changes and maintenance requirements continue.

Hurrell introduced return on capital employed as a key performance measure for Fonterra and Whineray’s safe pair of hands to carry that ball.

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