Fonterra Foodservice wins ExportNZ award

Fonterra’s Foodservice business has grown aggressively, especially in Asia, in recent years to cater for ‘out-of-home’ outlets such as bakeries, cafes, restaurants, hotels and fast food chains. The co-op’s goal is to achieve $5 billion sales by 2023 and a fundamental part of its strategy is to grow value by converting more of its milk into higher value consumer and foodservice products.

In Asia particularly, Fonterra has seen rapid growth in its foodservice business as an increasingly urbanised middle class turn to a more westernised diet. Forty per cent of people in urban China now eat in a western fast food outlet once a week, and they seek food that is high quality, naturally sourced and trusted.

China is Fonterra’s fastest growing foodservice market, and it has a 40% share of the imported dairy foodservice business there. As China’s leading dairy foodservice provider, Fonterra has grown at around 30% and is now located in more than 76 cities across China.

In 2016 Fonterra rebranded its foodservice business as Anchor Food Professionals. This was done to leverage Fonterra’s experience to create higher value, chef-led offerings for more foodservice customers and differentiate the co-operative as much more than an ingredient supplier.

Now ExportNZ Auckland and Waikato (divisions of the Employers and Manufacturers Association) has given their top award to Fonterra Foodservice after the co-op earlier won the Westpac Exporter of the Year (total sales over $25 million) category. There were 25 finalists across seven categories of the awards, sponsored by Air New Zealand Cargo.