In response to the devastating floods that hit the North Island of New Zealand last week, Fonterra has been supporting key community groups on the front-line giving assistance to affected kiwis.
Fonterra’s Community Engagement Manager Amavi Mey says the Co-op has already donated nearly NZ$300,000 worth of dairy products – amounting to nearly 70,000 individual items donated to NZ communities.
“With the deluge happening on a weekend, it was a real collaborative effort between our senior leaders, community partners, planners, customer services, logistics and warehouse teams to ensure we could dispatch much needed dairy products to impacted families immediately.”
Altogether, the Co-op will be contributing over a million serves of dairy – with its quarterly donation of Anchor milk powder to the NZ Food Network being made ahead of schedule, to enable surety of supply to Auckland and other regions over the coming weeks.
CEO of The New Zealand Food Network (NZFN), Gavin Findlay, said that with the many Aucklanders displaced by the flooding, the donation of quality dairy products will go a long way.
“Once again, our great partners at Fonterra are helping us get food to where it's needed most. Fonterra's quick response to this emergency shows their commitment to doing good together for the sake of our communities and reinforces the pride we have in having them on the NZFN team.”
Fonterra also has plans to engage in hands-on volunteer work with the NZ Food Network, Auckland City Mission and other community groups supporting the flood response.
“Like recent responses in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, our teams collaborated to do Good Together and get good quality nutrition into the hands of those who need it most” says Amavi.
A few weeks prior to the flooding in New Zealand, a 5.6 magnitude earthquake shook Indonesia’s most populated island Cianjur, West Java. Fonterra’s Indonesia team joined hands with NGO Jabar Bergerak to contribute more than 6,000 products of Anlene, Anmum and Anchor Boneeto to help the local community meet their nutritional needs. Given the collapse of public infrastructure, access to staple foods has been constrained.