About Us

Welcome to Dairy Holdings Ltd

Dairy Holdings Limited (Dairy Holdings) is a New Zealand wholly owned and operated company with 100% of its farming assets in the South Island of New Zealand.

The extensive South Island operations comprise 59 dairy farms, producing 17 million kilograms of milk solids from 50,000 milking cows.

The operations are self-contained and include 15 support farms that provide for the rearing and supply of 10,000 in-calf heifers per annum to the dairy farms and grazing of all non-lactating cows over the winter months.

Management is conducted from the Group's Ashburton office.

These operations commenced in June 2001.

Our Focus

We deliver our purpose by focusing on

People

Dairy Holdings has been accredited a Gold Member of the international Investors in People standard, recognising best practice in people management as an Employer of Choice.

Process

Dairy Holdings operations are driven by the overriding objective of maximising profitability by adopting systems that increase the quantity of pasture grown and harvested.

Pasture

Dairy Holdings owns, leases and controls the farms that supply all our pasture feed requirements. This enables our operations to be New Zealand’s pastoral environmental and animal husbandry leader.

Our Customers

We deliver our customers with the highest quality sustainable food.

For the 2018/19 season Dairy Holdings dairy farms are budgeted to supply Fonterra Cooperative Group Limited (Fonterra) with 16.1 million kilograms of milk solids from 54 farms. This makes Dairy Holdings the largest milk supplier and shareholder of Fonterra.

Our 5 farms located at Springs Junction will supply Westland Milk Products Limited (Westland) with 1.2 million kilograms of milk solids.

Our meat processor, Silver Fern Farms Limited, will receive approximately 6,500 cull cows and 1,300 bulls.

Our Business Objectives

Systems based around our people, our process and pasture is at the heart of the Dairy Holdings' business model.

This aligns with the overriding objective of maximising profitability by adopting systems that increase the quantity of pasture grown and harvested.

This business ethos is based on research conducted through Ruakura and more recently the Lincoln University Dairy Farm and Southern Dairy Hub that provides the base system for successful and profitable dairy farming. This system initially promoted by Dr C P McMeeken and subsequently by Dr Arnold Bryant, continues to be supported using high comparable stocking rate systems by DairyNZ.

Dairy Holdings' Shareholders, Directors and Management are committed to achieving consistent and repeatable levels of profitability predicated on simple, pasture only management systems.

To ensure systems are followed and that Dairy Holdings is regarded as an "employer of choice", Management, Sharemilkers, Contract Milkers and Staff are interviewed annually by Coach Approach Rural to ensure minimum standards are achieved or exceeded. Accredited farms are able to use the Coach Approach accredited logo when advertising for staff.

This simple pastoral-based farming approach has already enabled a significant number of the Group's 300 farm staff to progress through the Group's employment structure to Lower Order Sharemilking and 50/50 Sharemilking positions, and subsequently farm ownership.

This systems-based approach to dairy farming, enables the Group to now operate a significant corporate farming operation in New Zealand.