Milk and dairy are vital to helping meet the world’s nutritional needs. Good nutrition is essential for people to lead healthy and fulfilling lives.
People eat for enjoyment and for the nutrients needed to fuel growth, development, health and wellbeing.
Milk and dairy products are a natural, unique and valuable source of essential nutrients with proven benefits to support health outcomes throughout the life stages. As a natural food we see milk and dairy products as an important part of the sustainable food systems of the future.
Our Belief
At Fonterra we believe that sustainable dairy goodness provides vital nutrition that will help people lead better lives.
Our Approach
As a dairy nutrition company, we play a key role in contributing to the health of all Australians.
We achieve this by:
- Providing a balanced portfolio of products
- Providing our consumers with a choice of products and a variety of portion sizes to meet their nutrition requirements
- Providing transparency on our products so that consumers can make an informed choice
- Promoting our products in a responsible manner, aligned with the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating. Our Global Nutrition Council, which is comprised of senior leaders, is responsible for governing our nutrition policy, standards, guidelines and overseeing the nutrition performance of our portfolio.
The Fonterra Global Nutrition policy sets out our overarching commitments, including delivering science-based nutrition and health benefits, products tailored to specific nutritional needs and marketing these responsibly.
Our Global Nutrition Council, which is comprised of senior leaders, is responsible for governing our nutrition policy, standards, guidelines and overseeing the nutrition performance of our portfolio.
Our Nutrition Policy and Guidelines
The Fonterra Group Nutrition Policy sets out our high-level nutrition commitments to provide goodness for generations. In 2017, we launched the detailed Fonterra Food and Nutrition Guidelines. The guidelines set the nutrition criteria for our product composition and inform our marketing practices across all branded consumer products and ingredients that Fonterra manufactures.
The guidelines complement food standards and regulations, as well as our own education and advocacy activities to raise awareness of the value of dairy nutrition in healthy, balanced diets.
Adding further credibility to these guidelines, the New Zealand Nutrition Foundation has independently reviewed and endorsed them as evidence-based guidelines founded on robust nutritional science and reflecting international directives on nutrition and health.
In line with our endorsed nutrition guidelines, we continue to improve the nutritional composition of our products.
We make dairy products and ingredients that meet different health and wellness needs of consumers at every lifestage, all over the world. This is based on a belief in quality products, sound science and 'doing what's right' by our customers and consumers. We continually review our product portfolio to move our everyday products towards using minimum quantities of added sugars, refined carbohydrates, added fats, salt and other additives without comprising on quality, taste, texture or safety.
In Australia, we have a team of dietitians, nutritionists, scientists and food technologists who are committed to providing our consumers with a choice of products to meet their nutritional needs.
Our Research and Development Centre in New Zealand is the world’s leading dairy innovation hub with a team of 400 experts. With a diverse and global team, we offer a wide range of functional dairy solutions to meet the needs of consumers, hospitality, food industry and complimentary nutrition channels.
Fonterra supports the global public health objective to reduce intake of industrial trans fats in the diet and eliminate partially hydrogenated oils from the food supply. We do not use partially hydrogenated vegetable oils and ingredients containing industrial trans fats, in our products.
Related Documents
Fonterra Australia Nutrition Commitments
Nutrition Policy
Fonterra’s Nutrition Guidelines
Our Target
Our nutrition sustainability target is for 100% of our consumer products to comply with our independently reviewed Fonterra Food and Nutrition Guidelines by 2025. As we get closer to our 100% target, our ambition is to ensure we do not go below 90% compliance.
Global Nutrition Expert Panel
Our global nutrition expert panel is comprised of independent nutrition experts in their fields. Their role is to provide independent, external, nutrition expertise to bring insight and credibility to all actions and activities related to Fonterra’s Nutrition Identity and Strategy.
Responsible Marketing
We understand the important role we play in promoting healthy diets and lifestyles to our consumers and are committed to ensuring responsible consumption of our products throughout the life stages, in line with our company policies and Australian regulatory requirements.
Nutrition Community Initiatives
Alongside our partners here in Australia and around the world, we will continue to nourish those who need it most and support sustainable community projects. Learn more about just some of the many nutrition community initiatives we have underway.
In Australia
Foodbank
Foodbank is the largest hunger relief organisation in Australia, and we’ve been partners with them for close to 20 years. We know how important food relief agencies are in supporting communities right across the country. For many people who experience food insecurity, even affording milk can be a struggle, so by partnering with Foodbank we can bring the goodness of dairy to those in need. We’re the fresh milk supplier in Victoria for Foodbank’s National Milk Program, donating 150,000 litres of milk as well as other dairy foods (as of 04 March 2024).
In Australia
Tasmanian School's Breakfast Club
In some of Tasmania’s most remote schools, students are getting a chance to start the day on a full stomach, increasing their focus and appetite to learn. With regular donations of Fonterra’s Duck River Butter, nineteen schools across northern Tasmania are able to provide a daily breakfast club, an initiatve aimed to reduce the impact of disadvantage when breakfast is missed (as of 21 December 2023).
Around the World
KickStart Breakfast
KickStart Breakfast is a joint initiative between Fonterra Oceania, Sanitarium and the Ministry of Social Development in New Zealand. The programme is designed to positively impact child wellbeing through providing access to nutritious food at school. It's helping give our tamariki and rangatahi a boost to both their school day and their future by ensuring they have a healthy start along with a full puku to keep them alert in the classroom. KickStart Breakfast has served more than 70 million breakfasts since 2009 and has nearly 1,500 schools participating nationwide (as at 31 July 2024).
Around the world
Eat Well with Fonterra
For the last three years Fonterra Malaysia has partnered with Yayasan Food Bank Malaysia (YFBM) – a national food bank, developing initiatives to create a positive change in the community by putting its naturally nutritious dairy into the hands of those in need.
Contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Milk and dairy products provide a meaningful contribution to our nutrition status and health outcomes, with more than ten essential nutrients for relatively low calories, which makes it both nutrient rich and nutrient dense.
As a food nutrition company, we recognise the valuable role nutrient rich milk and dairy products can play in addressing micronutrient deficiencies, improving people’s health and wellbeing across the globe. We wholeheartedly support the the United Nations SDGs and are committed to playing our part by working collaboratively to deliver change at scale.
Zero hunger
- Provide access to safe, affordable nutrition.
- Address malnutrition through products tailored to specific health needs.
- Lift dairy productivity to meet growing nutritional needs in a sustainable way.
Good health and wellbeing
- Responsibly provide products to support the wellbeing of people, including mothers and infants.
- Continue to improve the nutritional profile of our products.
- Promote healthy and informed consumer choices.