Fonterra has overcome a year of disruption to ship more product to global markets than ever before.
It exported 2.59 million tonnes in the year to 31 July, a 4% increase on the previous year despite shipping capacity dropping 20% as shipping lines bypassed NZ to try and catch up on schedules.
In a challenging year, NZ exporters faced temporary port closures and restrictions because of port congestion and container shortages, leading to a plunge in shipping schedule reliability from a long-term average of 75-80% to below 35%.
“The critical event team worked tirelessly to coordinate our response across all our teams,” Fonterra’s chief operating officer Fraser Whineray says.
“This co-ordinated the efforts of the 800 or so people in our supply chain and another 100 in Kotahi and Coda,”
The 2.59m tonnes exported equates to more than 200,000 twenty foot containers shipped to more than 130 markets around the world.
Whineray does not expect an improvement in shipping conditions but says the efforts of logistical partners such as Kotahi and Coda has helped smooth what could have been an exceptionally difficult year.
“It’s been hard yards, but our Kotahi partnership has allowed us to keep our product moving through the supply chain.
“We couldn’t have achieved the result without our partners.
“Logistics company Coda Group ensured we responded well to new port acceptance windows, which were introduced to prevent port congestion in NZ,” Whineray says.
