Friday, March 29, 2024

Quick action paid off

Avatar photo
Dairyworks chief executive Tim Carter shares his team’s experience of the recent covid-19 lockdown and the impact on the business. 
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Like all New Zealand businesses, Dairyworks was affected by covid-19 and the resulting lockdown restrictions in March, April and May. 

We were fortunate to get a sense of the potential impact early from our Chinese customers so we got organised and being prepared early paid off during lockdown.

By late February we had activated our business continuity plans and a crisis management team was in place. Innovation and collaboration were critical during this time to ensure we could quickly respond to issues we had never faced before – while still being focused on the future and planning for our business post covid-19.

Keeping an eye on the future was key because during the alert level four lockdown Dairyworks had a change of ownership, joining the Synlait Milk family on April 1. 

This is an exciting opportunity for us. 

Dairyworks and Synlait Milk are a logical fit. 

We are like-minded companies with a shared passion for doing things differently in the dairy sector. It provides us with a wider support base to collaborate and maximise our joint efforts to keep growing our presence in the everyday dairy sector in NZ and Australia. 

The Dairyworks team was impressive during lockdown. Everyone contributed ideas and seemed to have endless energy to step up to face the challenges ahead. 

The Government identified us as being an essential business, which we considered a privilege but not one we took lightly. We are conscious many businesses weren’t as fortunate as us during this time and we had a responsibility to keep our staff safe and covid-19 free. 

We couldn’t and didn’t continue to operate on our own. Having strong supplier and key stakeholder relationships in place allowed us to be agile when demand and supply chain access could change in a heartbeat. That collaboration allowed us to provide an uninterrupted supply to supermarkets and food service businesses that were operating.

While demand for food service products, which is providing ingredients for restaurants and cafes, accounts for about 15% of our business in NZ, that demand largely disappeared during lockdown.

In contrast, the demand for grocery items increased significantly during level four. We were all topping up our pantries, preparing all meals at home and doing more baking. In the two weeks leading up to the lockdown supermarkets’ grocery food departments experienced a huge acceleration of growth on 2019. We have seen a slight softening in this demand since, however, supermarket spend is still tracking above 2019 results.

As the alert levels decreased food service demand has increased and grocery spend has deceased as Kiwis return to more normalised spending activity.

I’m extremely proud of the 250 Dairyworks staff who, despite risks to their own health and that of their bubbles, turned up on shift day in, day out to provide fresh food for NZ by ensuring supermarkets were well stocked. I believe our team, along with thousands of others in the food manufacturing industry throughout NZ, are some of the unsung heroes of the lockdown.

The loyalty and support NZ consumers showed to our Dairyworks family of brands was a huge motivation for our team during lockdown. We are all very grateful for this support.

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading