Move grows Fonterra's scope

Fairfax Media

ON THE MOVE: Fonterra is moving its European headquarters from Germany to Amsterdam.

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Fonterra is moving its European headquarters from Germany to Amsterdam as part of a major push to expand New Zealand's dairying business in Europe beyond the historic staples of commodity butter and cheese.

The company intends growing sales of value-added ingredients and food technology solutions to big corporate food makers and the professional culinary sector – a strategy it said is working successfully in the United States and Middle East markets.

Europe accounted for only 7 per cent of Fonterra's $16 billion annual revenues last year.

Fonterra Europe general manager Koert Liekelema said value-added ingredients included milk powders for infant formula and hypoallergenic milk protein hydrolysates for use in nutritional foods for the elderly, the sick and those who have an allergy to ordinary milk.

Fonterra's Europe technology application centre, which takes technology and food solutions developed at the dairy giant's Palmerston North research headquarters and helps overseas market customers apply them to their own products, will also move from Hamburg to Amsterdam.

Fonterra also plans to become active in the Netherlands' "Food Valley" – like Silicon Valley but with a dairy industry focus, near Amsterdam – he said.

"[We] will reach out to that to see if there are options for doing research together."

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