Latest / Best of Business / Mark Leslie: Pamū Landcorp CEO on the company's turnaround in profit

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Mark Leslie: Pamū Landcorp CEO on the company's turnaround in profit · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: Huge turnaround for Land Corp. Reporting a net profit after
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  Speaker 2: tax of one hundred and twenty million dollars for the year.
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  Speaker 2: That is up from a twenty six million dollar net
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  Speaker 2: loss last year. This means the business is going to
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  Speaker 2: pay the government a dividend of fifteen million dollars. Mark
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  Speaker 2: Leslie's the chief executive and with us Hi, Mark.
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  Speaker 3: Good evening, Heather you God be with you now.
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  Speaker 2: You sound as thrilled as I think that you are.
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  Speaker 3: I am, and it's great to post the result. But
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  Speaker 3: equally I'm thrilled for all of our people as well,
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  Speaker 3: because there's a a lot of people right through the
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  Speaker 3: organization who work hard every day and many who do
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  Speaker 3: the mahia on the farms every day. It's nice to
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  Speaker 3: be able to acknowledge their hard work turning up and
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  Speaker 3: producing some fantastic results.
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  Speaker 2: What's the secret to the turnaround? How'd you do this?
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  Speaker 3: I think it's it is something that we as a
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  Speaker 3: team have been working on over the last few years.
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  Speaker 3: It's a very new look the leadership group with some
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  Speaker 3: few white heads in there as well, and just really
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  Speaker 3: going back to some real good basics of farming and
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  Speaker 3: farm management. So whether it's our livestock farms and just
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  Speaker 3: start focusing on the core of landing percentages and things
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  Speaker 3: like that, or our dairy units and focusing on cows
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  Speaker 3: and condition and the likes. We've just really gone back
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  Speaker 3: to those basics to get the core fundamentals right. And
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  Speaker 3: the nice part of it that's gone with it is
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  Speaker 3: actually getting some really good commodity prices, so that's helped
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  Speaker 3: as part of that as well. And I think you're
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  Speaker 3: saying where were I suppose a we're a good signal
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  Speaker 3: of where the agriculture sector is at at the moment
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  Speaker 3: in a pretty good heart.
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  Speaker 2: What have you ditched?
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  Speaker 3: We've had We've had to make some few tough calls.
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  Speaker 3: So with Palmer Foods, which was our venture into selling
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  Speaker 3: products beyond the farm gate, we had a tough call
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  Speaker 3: on that about eighteen months and closed some of that down.
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  Speaker 3: We've consolidated some leadership roles and taken some overheads out.
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  Speaker 3: There was a number of when I started, there was
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  Speaker 3: probably one hundred plus little trials right across the farm,
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  Speaker 3: across all of our farms and they were each in
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  Speaker 3: their own right it were interesting, but they were probably
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  Speaker 3: an element of distraction as well. So we've simplified and
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  Speaker 3: stripped some of those things back and then allow us
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  Speaker 3: us to focus on those core things that farmers need
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  Speaker 3: to do every day.
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  Speaker 1: What kind of.
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  Speaker 2: Stuff was Palmu food selling?
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  Speaker 3: So Palmu Foods was selling milk powder, bulk milk powder
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  Speaker 3: out into the international market. So yeah, that was at
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  Speaker 3: a time I suppose in the past where the business
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  Speaker 3: was looking to divers diversify its incomes trains, and so
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  Speaker 3: that was established and hey, you ended up competing with
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  Speaker 3: some of the very large processes out in New Zealand.
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  Speaker 3: And the call was we made the call that that
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  Speaker 3: was our core business and go back to where we
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  Speaker 3: can fundamentally make it different.
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  Speaker 2: And what about these trials? What was the most ambitious
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  Speaker 2: of the trials?
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  Speaker 3: There was a number of them. There was there was
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  Speaker 3: technology trials looking at condition scoring cows and the likes
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  Speaker 3: and and many of them will have their day and
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  Speaker 3: they will come to fruition. So but we've gone back
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  Speaker 3: and said, hey, let's look at those. We don't need
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  Speaker 3: to be at the bleeding edge of some of those technologies.
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  Speaker 3: We've continued some of the areas with jetts and dairy
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  Speaker 3: beef and where we believe we've got some real skills,
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  Speaker 3: so we're focused back on those because they will drive
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  Speaker 3: our core performance.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, are you still doing the deer milking?
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  Speaker 3: Yep, we are still looking at it. Well. We are
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  Speaker 3: still doubt selling deer products as we speak, and we've
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  Speaker 3: got really strong consumer demand coming out of Southeast Asia.
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  Speaker 3: It's a very very small part of our business, so
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  Speaker 3: my focus is on the bigger part, but we've kept
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  Speaker 3: that going. It's a nice compliment to our large dear business.
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  Speaker 3: We have a very large dear business across the rest
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  Speaker 3: of the network.
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  Speaker 2: So do you reckon you've put the brakes by delivering
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  Speaker 2: a result like this and then also talking about, you know,
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  Speaker 2: maybe even increasing it through to twenty thirty in the
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  Speaker 2: next five years. Do you reckon you've put the brakes
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  Speaker 2: on the government selling off bits of you.
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  Speaker 3: I've always been pretty clear on that that's a decision
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  Speaker 3: for the government of the day, but also a that
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  Speaker 3: I've also seen it does have some complexities with it
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  Speaker 3: as well. There is a number of those farms that
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  Speaker 3: are still subject to treaty sentiment settlements. As a number
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  Speaker 3: that are leased, there's a number of it. They've got
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  Speaker 3: first right of refusal, so that that has some complexity.
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  Speaker 3: That's a decision for the government of the day. The
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  Speaker 3: that I can keep doing is what we've just been
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  Speaker 3: talking about is delivering some fantastic results and playing a
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  Speaker 3: dividend back to the crown.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, good stuff, Mark, keep it up. Thank you, Mark Leslie,
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  Speaker 2: Chief executive of Land carp
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