Prioritising partnerships – Fonterra named as an AFR 2024 Customer Champion Leader
Fonterra has been named a 2024 Customer Champion Leader by The Australian Financial Review, recognising our strong, long-standing relationships with customers, farmers, and suppliers across the supply chain.
This celebrates a strong history of recognition for providing market-leading customer service across our three sales channels for the Oceania business – Consumer, Foodservice and Ingredients.
Our customers choose to partner with Fonterra because of our world-class support in dairy innovation, technical, regulatory and quality assurance, global connectivity and sustainability.
But it all starts on farm.
In Australia, Fonterra partners with around 600 farmers across Victoria and Tasmania to collect 1.4 billion litres of milk each year which goes into our iconic dairy brands including Western Star, Perfect Italiano and Bega, as well as fit-for-purpose dairy solutions to out-of-home establishments and major food manufacturers.
Fonterra’s Managing Director, Global Markets Consumer and Foodservice, and Oceania, René Dedoncker, said that Fonterra’s relationship with its Australian farmers was fundamental to the competitive advantage and success it enjoys in the dairy industry.
“We have an exceptionally strong relationship with the dairy farmers we partner with across Victoria and Tasmania. This year, we saw a 98 per cent retention rate of farmers in Australia,” René said.
"Farm Source has provided advice on improving productivity, helped us roll out a Farm Environment Plan and, through the Farm Source app, provide real-time data to track the performance of my business."
“This success is driven by our Farm Source offering, which supports farmers' businesses and livelihoods through technical, productivity, financial and environmental advice,” René added.
Celia Hobbs, a dairy farmer from Echuca, spoke to the relationship with Fonterra. Celia switched processors to Fonterra in 2021 and credits Fonterra for providing exceptional support.
“We barely knew our previous processor’s manager. Within two months, we knew the whole Fonterra team. They were phenomenal from the start,” Celia said.
“In the first three months of the relationship, we had a pretty big weather event with a lot of rain. It was not the greatest environment to start the relationship, but Farm Source helped us to keep on milking.
Fonterra Managing Director, Global Markets Consumer and Foodservice, and Oceania, René Dedoncker
Dairy farmer Celia Hobbs farms in Echuca, northern Victoria.
“They not only helped out in a crisis. Farm Source has also provided advice on improving productivity, helped us roll out a Farm Environment Plan and, through the Farm Source app, provide real-time data to track the performance of my business,” Celia said.
Fonterra is delighted to accept the recognition of 2024 AFR Customer Champion Leader in the Established B2B Category.
For more, read the full article in The Australian Financial Review.