COVER STORY Westland Milk Products has recently put a lot of time and energy into revising its company purpose and strategy, following a complete redeveloping of its brand imagery. Chief executive Toni Brendish explains why. Research shows that high performing companies have a great sense of purpose, a clear strategy and branding to match. They put time and money into getting this right, because it works. Take, for example, Westland’s rebrand of its Westgold brand just over a year ago. This coincided with the launch of Westgold butter onto the New Zealand retail market, a launch complemented by Westgold Butter winning the NZ Champions of Cheese Awards’ best butter prize for 2016. Our brands were awarded twice in the same competition this year. ‘Crafted over generations’ was the catchphrase to launch Westgold butter into an already crowded domestic market. It worked… Westland has just marked the sale of its one millionth block of Westgold in New Zealand, outselling all other Kiwi butters combined in the ‘artisan butter’ segment of the market. Targeting the gourmet end of the market comes with a risk but also an opportunity - the premiums involved give better overall returns than at the bulk commodity end of the same product range. The big risk is that increasingly discerning customers have a real choice, so why should they choose your product over someone else’s? That is where the ‘story’ or ‘brand’ comes in. Westland has chosen to draw the consumers’ attention to its long and proud history of family-owned farms producing high-quality milk down through the generations. ‘Crafted over generations’ connects the consumer to the farmer who produced the cream from which their butter was made. We have taken this connection to our history of farming family pride in their product to another level, with the announcement this month that our new purpose is ‘Nourishment made beautifully for generations’. This is what the New Zealand dairy industry is about, producing nourishment for consumers who not only want quality and safety, they want a personal connection with the story behind the food they choose to buy. New Zealand cannot feed the world, but we can meet the demand for high-end, high quality, differentiated products that well informed, discerning consumers are prepared to pay a premium for. Which is exactly Toni Brendish C H R I S T C H U R C H what our new strategy, ‘To offer differentiated products that leverage our heritage and location’ is all about. Of course, the brand has to be backed by a genuinely superior product. You can have all the slogans you like, but if the actual product doesn’t deliver, consumer loyalty will simply disappear. Which is where our food technology and production set-up comes in. Westland is, by New Zealand standards, a large company, but we are tiny compared with the global dairy giants and we do not have the capacity to produce millions of tonnes of bulk commodity products. But our size and technology gives us the ability to be flexible, innovative and able to form very close, mutually beneficial relationships with key customers; where we share innovation, technology, product development and an ability to use our plant in a myriad of ways to differentiate product and meet demands of key niche markets. Throughout our plant we have built in, or are building in, the ability to segregate our production runs. Our co-operative model works for us in this regard as we have the ability to work directly with our farmers to commence differentiation on-farm, before the milk gets to the factory. Like wine companies, we expect that we will soon be able to exploit such niches as the processing of milk with particular properties, lineage or regionality. C H I E F E X E C U T I V E : Westland Milk Products (since September 2016) B A C K G R O U N D : DKSH (Thailand) vice president, Danone Dumex (Malaysia) managing director of Nutricia Australia and New Zealand, Danone Dumex (Malaysia) managing director, Danone dairy business Indonesia managing director. C O M PA N Y : A dairy co-operative based in Hokitika owned by 400 farming families since 1937 which focuses on growth through increased milk supply and value-added products and brands. Westland is one of New Zealand’s leading producers of infant nutrition ingredients. 16 AUGUST 2017
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