Protectionism threatened world trade and volatile prices in world markets were here to stay, he told an investors’ presentation.
Climate change threatened world food production, which accounted for 30% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Food was 40% of global employment and accounted for 10% of all consumer spending.
But food productivity growth was only 1% a year and if that could be raised to 2-3% it could alleviate world poverty.
Fonterra was prepared to budget on 2-3% sustainable milk supply growth in New Zealand but offshore milk was needed to meet demand.
Spierings presented the V3 strategic framework “to be the world’s most trusted source of dairy nutrition”.
In FY 2016 ingredients sales volume had grown by 19% to be 58% of total sales, mostly at the expense of the GDT price-setting auction channel, which had fallen by 24% to be 20% of the total.
Food service and consumer sales had grown by 15% and 5% respectively.
The food service and consumer products volume had grown by a billion litres over the past two years and now accounted for 20% of the total sales of 23.7b litres combined.
“If the scale of our capacity is matched by greater depth and flexibility in sales channels and financial markets, substantially higher and less volatile earnings are possible,” he said.
Spierings said Fonterra remained on track to deliver its strategy of shifting more milk into value-added products by 2025.
It was aiming for $35b turnover, to be the number one ingredients dairy company in the world and to be number one or two in key strategic consumer markets.
