14 Oct 2021

Anchor Food Professionals reaches $3bn in annual revenue

3:37 pm on 14 October 2021

Anchor Food Professionals - Fonterra's foodservice business - has defied Covid challenges to become a $3 billion annual revenue business.

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Photo: Supplied

Fonterra says the milestone was pleasing, despite restaurants around the world being affected by Covid-19.

Chief executive Miles Hurrell said the success was down to the the co-op's strong connection to customers.

"Our people have worked hard to find new ways of working with customers and new product applications to suit the pandemic environment, and we can see this has been a success.

"Foodservice is a high value channel for our farmers' milk and a key part of our long-term strategy. This is why we're aiming to increase our milk solids into Foodservice by approximately 50 percent by 2030 and grow our presence across further markets including Greater China, South East Asia and the USA."

Fonterra said it was planning to invest about $1 billion in moving milk into higher value products, and increase its research and development budget by 50 percent, to support growth to 2030.

It also wants Anchor Food Professionals to become a $5 billion annual revenue business by 2030.

Paul Harvey, Anchor Food Professionals director of global food service

Paul Harvey, Anchor Food Professionals director of global food service Photo: Supplied

Fonterra director of global food service, Paul Harvey, said the co-op had become more nimble and agile to meet customers' needs as a result of the pandemic.

He said Anchor Food Professionals chefs works alongside customers in their kitchens to match their needs.

"To offer solutions we need to know what the problem is, and in many cases the issues are in the kitchen, and that's where we are spending much more time with our customers who want our help.

"We now have 55 chefs around the world who go into kitchens like this where they also help their customers design new innovative products to address their problems," Harvey said.

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