The latest PR offering from Ravensdown on its palm kernel business was nothing more than a slippery backslide designed to do nothing more than calm the angry hordes of arable farmers who make up a substantial percentage of Ravensdown's fertiliser profits.Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. First they try to make a buck at the expense of cropping farmers by importing palm kernel to dairy farmers, when those very same farmers might have purchased wheat from their New Zealand neighbours, and now they have fobbed the protests aside by claiming that they are the arable industry's saviour, charging in on a white horse.
Their PR doctors should be given a pay rise (the palm kernel profits could be the trick) for their claim that by adding a small amount of grain to PKE this season they have created a 'new' domestic grain market for farmers.
Very few wheat farmers sell their grain for the purpose of Ravensdown's diffusive business plans and two major points have been missed in the process.
Ravensdown is a farmer's co-operative - not a dairy farmer co-operative, not a sheep farmer or arable farmer co-operative, but a united farmer's co-operative and as such any move by the directors to go into a business which seriously disadvantages one group of farmers like the palm kernel imports does should be vetoed.
These board sitters should be sacked if they can't even stick to the core principles of a co-operative and arable farmers should vote with their feet and buy from the opposition until such time as Ravensdown sees fit to even up the playing field again.
Imagine the outrage from dairy farmers if Ravensdown went into importing milk powder to those beef farmers breeding bobby calves. It is the same thing.
They are a fertiliser co-operative and these decisions serve to drive a wedge right through their community of shareholders. Many were unhappy about the decision to stray from their core business of fertiliser when they decided to go into agri-chemicals and many more may be unhappy if this foray into palm kernel imports proves marginal on the bank sheet as some suspect it might.
If Ballance were smart they would move in for the kill. There has never been a more opportune time.
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2 comments:
What a brainless and uninformed person you are. You appear to have very little concept of the current financial agri-business environment. Good on companies like Ravensdown who are spreading their wings and supporting their shareholders by providing products at competitive rates. Long may they do more!
Dear Anonymous (please don't be afraid to give me your name so I know who I am responding too),
I do not have a problem with providing products at competitive rates as long as it does not disadvantage one of the industries it is serving...i.e agrichemicals. However PKE has damaged the arable industry and I don't know of many companies that do things do damage their shareholders interests. That's not generally the way a company operates!
As for 'brainless' and 'uninformed', I let the reader reserve judgement but do ask that comments are kept 'clean' without the use of slanging terms. It is not conducive to a discussion which is what this forum provides.
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