That’s 3c less than previously forecast.
It also forecast the total payout available to farmers for their 2017-18 season would be $7.20-7.30/kg MS, made up of a farmgate milk price of $6.75/kg MS and earnings per share of 45-55 cents.
The co-operative’s revenue for the last financial year increased by 12% to $19.2 billion with rising prices offsetting a 3% decline in volumes.
Normalised earnings before interest and tax of $1.2b were down 15% as a result of reduced margins across the business, which also influenced net profit after tax, down 11% at $745 million.
Chairman John Wilson said the co-operative’s ability to maintain its forecast dividend despite the milk price increasing by 57% over the year and the impact of negative stream returns was an excellent result.
“We will always need to manage variability across our co-operative – both in global markets and in our local farming conditions.
“We’ve demonstrated our ability to deal with those conditions and deliver on our strategy again this year.
“Over recent seasons our farmers have made significant personal sacrifices to reduce costs through a sustained, low milk price period.
“Despite lower milk volumes due to poor weather in parts of the season the business delivered a good result by prioritising higher value advanced ingredients and growing our sales of these in-demand and specialised products by 473m LME this year.”
Chief executive Theo Spierings said the quality of the co-operative’s performance and its solid earnings resulted from two consistent themes.
“We have been clear and single-minded about delivering to strategy, leveraging our scale efficiencies and prioritising value and higher margin products.
“At the same time we have tapped into the expertise of our people to come up with innovative ways to generate higher returns for the future.”
Spierings said higher-value advanced ingredients achieved a 9% increase in sales volumes.
“This includes sales of products such as functional proteins, high-spec whole milk powder and extra-stretch cheese. These advanced ingredients made up 19% of our total external sales volumes this year.”
