Another reshuffle at Fonterra

Fonterra's [NZX: FCG] local consumer businesses will come under the gaze of Australian managing director Judith Swales in the latest restructure at the world's biggest dairy exporter.

Ms Swales has been promoted to managing director Oceania, a new unit that adds the New Zealand consumer business to Fonterra's Australian segment. She joins Fonterra's management team, having run the Australian unit for the past two years.

Fonterra Brands New Zealand will continue to run as a standalone unit in New Zealand, with its managing director reporting to Melbourne-based Ms Swales.

"Judith has a great understanding of consumers and their relationship to brands and has proven her ability to build effective partnerships in the highly competitive supermarket sector in Australia," chief executive Theo Spierings says. "She has already achieved progress in a difficult environment and the turnaround is reaching a point where she is more than capable of taking on expanded responsibilities."

Fonterra is running the ruler over its operations, and has so far laid-off 750 staff in administration roles, ingredients sales, consumer, marketing, research and development, communications, health and safety, food safety and quality, group resilience and risk, property, procurement and change management in an effort to save $103 million annually.

Adding Ms Swales to the senior management team is the second reshuffle this year after Mr Spierings appointed Jacqueline Chow as the newly-created chief operating officer, velocity, and expanded Johan Priem's role to Asia, Middle East and Africa from his previous mandate of greater China.

The bundling of the consumer business into the Australia segment comes after Fonterra yesterday launched a new range of Anchor-branded cream across the Tasman for the first time, selling the product exclusively at Woolworths supermarkets.

Mr Spierings says bringing the brands portfolio and businesses together was in line with Fonterra's drive to improve efficiency.

Fonterra's consumer and food service unit derived about $51 million in earnings from its Oceania segment in the year ended July 31, about 13% of total earnings. A year earlier, the segment contributed a loss of $24 million.

Units in the Fonterra Shareholders' Fund, which gives investors exposure to the dairy company's earnings stream, increased 0.4% to $5.35, and have declined 11% this year.

(BusinessDesk)