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Fonterra botulism alert

Kalidane

By Kalidane
in General chitchat

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Gym rat Veteran member

Gym rat

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I heard about this on the news tonight and wow that sounds very scary and thank god I dont use whey from Fonterra also I image that a lot of people who buy whey from Fonterra will be making the change to another brand like what ever that may be

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Kalidane Senior member

Kalidane

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I'll take the hit for a few bags of Alacen 450 lol

#sellingsoulsforprotein

lol'd

 

This is a bit of thing for all protein suppliers.  Unti a company comes out and says 'We're all good mate' they will be on the list of possibles.  Perhaps if the issue goes away fast enough, there won't be a great need to engage PR but I still see it as a good opportunity for front-foot suppliers to engage with the consumer.  Not managing the situation isn't likely to be the optimal path.

 

I can't help thinking that any company not having anything to communicate by Monday is in fact making a statement - "not a single f*ck was given".

 

There is bound to be (excessive?) media follow up of the matter and when the NZHerald article is written with quotes from numerous NZ suppliers, it is a good look to be included.

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Pseudonym Veteran member

Pseudonym

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Yeah, refusing to publicise the names of the affected companies seems like a strange PR move. I guess those companies are Fonterra's customers, and Fonterra may be trying to protect them. But it seems like a pretty short-sighted PR strategy.

After Fonterra's melamine problems in China, another scare is going to be disastrous for them, and the entire NZ dairy industry will feel it.

With the world less hungry for NZ dairy, maybe domestic prices will come down. Yay, cheap protein! Unfortunately, what we save on milk will likely be offset by the overall damage to our economy.

Those are my predictions as an armchair economist. Anyone else care to join in the speculation?

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Dinahlady Senior member

Dinahlady

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Hopefully it doesn't effect the economy too much - News always hypes things up. Asian market is huge and I'm pretty sure they can't speak for the whole of Asia when they report that they no longer are interested in fonterra products. 

It's pretty silly - I'm sure the report said that they found out quickly and recalled the products that had been affected. There was no actual "warning" that anyone would or had gotten hurt from it. 

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Pseudonym Veteran member

Pseudonym

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Russia has also closed its doors to NZ milk powder.

But as far as sports supplements go, it looks like the only company to be affected is Aussie Bodies. And even then, it's only one product line and that would have been sterilised in the production process anyway.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10908243

Its Aussie Bodies Ultra High Temperature (UHT) range of sports supplement drinks contained Fonterra's affected WPC80.

However, the UHT manufacturing process is universally regarded as a commercial sterilisation process and the products were safe, said a statement on the company's website.

Other products under the Aussie Bodies brand - such as sports nutrition protein powders or bars - did not contain the affected ingredient.

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Kalidane Senior member

Kalidane

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Well done Nutratech.

 

I was hoping this would be a bit of a storm in a teacup but unfortunately it's proving to be quite serious.  Stuff have a good summary of numbers to give a sense of scale.

 

Unsure of how much Fonterra has had to say so far but they filed this with the NZX early this morning.

 

So far we have China blocking the import of all dairy products from NZ and Australia, Russia has blocked all NZ dairy imports and Thailand has ordered a recall of Fonterra products imported since May of this year (presumably an import ban also but I haven't seen it specified).

 

The NZ Dollar is likely to prove resilient, having already negated around 1/2 it's losses against our major trading partners.  The risk being that China maintain their ban for an extended period.  Anything more than about 3 weeks and things start to get a bit 'tricky'.  Having a mountain of powder sitting around is not ideal.  There's no real possiblity of stuffing supply channels with the surplus simply due to the relative scale of China vs other segments and selling a food manufacturer 2-3 months supply at a discounted rate can be worse than dumping some of it.

 

All this just days after Fonterra lifted their 2014 forecast payout to farmers by $0.50 to $7.50/kg... that could be revised anywhere in the fullness of time.

 

I'll see if any interesting commentary comes to hand overnight.  Reactions from London and New York are of far greater significance for the currency than what has occured at this stage (though New York knew of it Saturday morning our time and did not seem terribly interested).

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