Friday, March 29, 2024

Merger creates national outfit

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Sir James Wallace has rationalised New Zealand’s co-products industry by merging part of his family business with Farm Brands to create Wallace Group.
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Farm Brands was jointly owned by the Spence family of Auckland and Sapi SpA (Societa Azionaria Prodotti Industrali), an Italian co-products and rendering business.

Arts patron and philanthropist Sir James would own half of the new Wallace Group, the Spences a quarter and the Italians a quarter.

The $100 million-plus merger created a national coverage of rendering plants, extended the reach of casualty cow pick-ups into the South Island and enabled investments in science and further innovation.

However, more than half of Wallace Corporation, comprising farms here and in Chile and biotechnology investments in polymers remained outside of the co-products merger, Sir James said.

In the future all his personal shareholdings would pass to the Wallace Arts Trust and charitable foundations.

The corporation’s chief executive Graham Shortland had been appointed to run Wallace Group and it would be based at the head office site at Waitoa, Waikato.

Farm Brands chief executive Hugh Spence said his family had traded rendered products with Wallace for more than 40 years.

The Farm Brands joint venture was formed in 2009 between Silver Fern Farms and Modena Investments, owned by the Spences and Sapi.

SFF withdrew in 2015 and was now effectively replaced by Wallace.

The warehousing and distribution investment in IQI (United States and Holland) remained outside the merger, Spence said.

Sir James welcomed the chance to consolidate and develop his chosen industry, which, along with the Spences and the family-owned Lowe Corporation, had remained predominantly NZ-owned in recent times.

With the new national coverage Wallace Group could process the co-products of all meat plants in the regions, he said.

It would be rendering at Waitoa, Hororata in Canterbury, at Washdyke, Timaru, at Silverstream in Dunedin, tanning skins and hides at Waitoa and making mountains of compost at Waitoa. It had two regional collection facilities in Northland and Manawatu.

Farm Brands also had an export trading business in Auckland for protein meals and tallow that would be retained and continue to operate under that name.

Wallace sold its meat processing plant at Waitoa to SFF in 2011.

The merger would hasten the development of added-value products like biopolymers from blood using a process discovered at the University of Waikato and backed by Wallace Corporation.

Sir James referred to the parchments made from calf skins and sent to Israel for traditional documentation while also displaying at National Fieldays the wide variety of colours and garments made from hides and pelts.

Wallace Corporation was founded in 1931 as a small rendering business in Waikato by agricultural contractor James Dunning Wallace, who had two sons, Sir James and David.

Sir James trained in law and worked for Sir Robert Kerridge and Sir Woolf Fisher before returning to the family business and beginning the art collection now numbering more than 8000 pieces.

David continued in business and farming locally, trading as JD and RD Wallace, as well as live animal exporting, and funding his passion of conservation and native species restoration.

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