Latest / Best of Business / Mark Leslie: Pāmu CEO on the company hitting operating profit goal four years early
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- 0:09Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from news Talk zed be
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- 0:16Speaker 2: Now Land Corp has hit its goal of one hundred
- 0:19Speaker 2: million dollars net operating profit four years early, which is
- 0:22Speaker 2: something obviously to crow about. The country state owned farmer
- 0:25Speaker 2: reported a one hundred and thirteen million dollar profit, which
- 0:28Speaker 2: is a big increase on last year's profit of just
- 0:30Speaker 2: shire fifty million dollars. Chief executive Mark Leslie is with
- 0:33Speaker 2: us Nowhi.
- 0:34Speaker 3: Mark, good evening, heaven, Great to be with you.
- 0:37Speaker 2: How have you achieved this? This is great?
- 0:40Speaker 3: Oh. It has been a real positive effort from many
- 0:43Speaker 3: of our team over the last three to four years,
- 0:45Speaker 3: and a lot of it's just been going back to
- 0:48Speaker 3: being doing the really good basics of farming, doing it
- 0:50Speaker 3: really well, so looking after your pastures, looking after your animals,
- 0:55Speaker 3: and importantly getting our teams to work together across the business,
- 0:58Speaker 3: so not just thinking about it as individual farms, thinking
- 1:01Speaker 3: about as the whole collective. So it's just been a
- 1:03Speaker 3: real collective effort and getting all of our teams just
- 1:06Speaker 3: to focus on those real core basics of farming.
- 1:08Speaker 2: Do you reckon you can strip out how much of
- 1:10Speaker 2: this has got to do with, you know, just strong
- 1:13Speaker 2: commodity prices, and how much of it has got to
- 1:15Speaker 2: do with you guys sort of whipping the business back
- 1:18Speaker 2: into shape.
- 1:20Speaker 3: Yeah, and yeah, that's it's a really fair question. And prices. Hey,
- 1:24Speaker 3: no denying prodein prices have definitely helped us, and we're
- 1:27Speaker 3: not pretending otherwise. But if you look at it, sixty
- 1:31Speaker 3: percent of that uplift has actually come from productivity. So
- 1:34Speaker 3: across our livestock business we've had a sort of fifteen
- 1:36Speaker 3: sixteen percent improvement and productivity well live weight production, and
- 1:41Speaker 3: the same with milk production we've had a similar sort
- 1:43Speaker 3: of fifteen percent improvement. So yeah, a big part of
- 1:46Speaker 3: it is come from productivity drivers, and we've also been
- 1:49Speaker 3: supported by some favorable pricing as part of that. Mark.
- 1:53Speaker 2: I'm fascinated by your story because you guys were just
- 1:57Speaker 2: floundering around and really unimpressive until simm and Brown started
- 2:02Speaker 2: cracking the whip on you. Is that really what it took?
- 2:04Speaker 2: Did it take a minister telling you to sort it out?
- 2:08Speaker 3: Oh? The minister was definitely very clear around the expectations
- 2:12Speaker 3: on us. I've been here just over four years and
- 2:15Speaker 3: we definitely had some focus to start whipping the business
- 2:19Speaker 3: into into into shape. Changing farms and the likes doesn't
- 2:23Speaker 3: occur overnight, so we had had a plan underway, but
- 2:27Speaker 3: the Minister made it very clear, so yep, definitely encouraged
- 2:30Speaker 3: it to go probably go faster, and made it really
- 2:32Speaker 3: clear the expectations he had of us.
- 2:33Speaker 2: But talk me through this, because I wonder if you
- 2:36Speaker 2: guys are emblematic of what is going on in the
- 2:38Speaker 2: public sector more widely, where there's a kind of just
- 2:40Speaker 2: like a stasis and just an acceptance of mediocrity until
- 2:44Speaker 2: somebody comes in and goes, come on, pull your socks up.
- 2:47Speaker 2: Why why is that happening?
- 2:50Speaker 3: I can't comment probably more broadly for that. For I
- 2:53Speaker 3: can comment for our side of it.
- 2:54Speaker 2: For your business, tell me about it, yeh.
- 2:57Speaker 3: For our business, OZ brought in with a clear, clear
- 2:59Speaker 3: mandate to come in and actually really focus on our
- 3:02Speaker 3: farming part of the business. So that's what I've done.
- 3:04Speaker 2: What did you find when you got in there? Why
- 3:07Speaker 2: were people accepting mediocrity and losses?
- 3:11Speaker 3: I think there was there was lots of good intent
- 3:14Speaker 3: for different parts. For but a little bit to my
- 3:16Speaker 3: commune earlier on around we had a number of our
- 3:18Speaker 3: farms operating very much as individual farms and making individual
- 3:22Speaker 3: decisions that in their own right all made sense. But
- 3:25Speaker 3: if you're going to have a collective of farms, make
- 3:27Speaker 3: the most of it. And real simple examples is that
- 3:31Speaker 3: if you've got lambs that are surplus on one farm,
- 3:34Speaker 3: and if you've got surplus feed on another farm, how
- 3:36Speaker 3: do you match the two together to take the benefit
- 3:38Speaker 3: of that versus buying and selling on and trading and
- 3:41Speaker 3: the life.
- 3:41Speaker 2: So how was that not happening?
- 3:45Speaker 3: Hey, that's not that's not one for me here that
- 3:46Speaker 3: my mind was the face.
- 3:48Speaker 2: Becoming You are the one who changed it. So like,
- 3:50Speaker 2: why did they why did they tolerate.
- 3:53Speaker 3: That I can't come in or what others tolerated in
- 3:56Speaker 3: the past. For me, when I came in, it was
- 3:58Speaker 3: was pretty clear what the opportunity was either. So that
- 4:01Speaker 3: was I said about getting focused very clearly on just
- 4:04Speaker 3: driving that performance and getting and getting those wins out
- 4:06Speaker 3: of it.
- 4:06Speaker 2: I mean, I look, I'm asking you to be basically
- 4:09Speaker 2: you know, pat yourself on the back here, But is
- 4:11Speaker 2: this ultimately what it comes down to. You need like
- 4:13Speaker 2: a good leader like yourself in a position like that
- 4:15Speaker 2: will change everything.
- 4:17Speaker 3: I think you need a good team of people around you.
- 4:19Speaker 3: I've got a great team from the senior teams that
- 4:23Speaker 3: support me right down to our farm teams. And hey,
- 4:26Speaker 3: everybody whenever they go to work just wants clarity and
- 4:29Speaker 3: what's expected them today. So we set about just being
- 4:32Speaker 3: really clear around what's what's the fundamentals again and gave
- 4:35Speaker 3: them that direction and gave them the encouragement to get
- 4:38Speaker 3: on and do it. And our teams have really enjoyed
- 4:40Speaker 3: that focus around just been really good at those basic
- 4:43Speaker 3: farming skills. So yep, a lot of people across the
- 4:45Speaker 3: business have really hunkered down and done that over the
- 4:47Speaker 3: last few years and did the hard work out on
- 4:49Speaker 3: the farms every day.
- 4:50Speaker 2: Well, you're going to have to reset your goals, So
- 4:52Speaker 2: what's it now?
- 4:53Speaker 3: Yeah, we definitely have to reset some goals. But no,
- 4:56Speaker 3: there's also a few challenges and I know you've probably
- 4:57Speaker 3: got a couple of those conversations later on your show.
- 5:00Speaker 3: Costs associated with feed and fertilizer are challenging at the
- 5:04Speaker 3: moment and product prices. So for me, it's around make
- 5:08Speaker 3: it enduring or durable? What if it weird? You want
- 5:10Speaker 3: to use? So it's for us now starting to repeat
- 5:12Speaker 3: that year on you. That's that's our aim going forward.
- 5:15Speaker 2: Mark, thank you for your time, mate and cracker bottle
- 5:18Speaker 2: or something for that, I think Mark Leslie Pamuland Corp.
- 5:20Speaker 2: Chief Executive.
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