Fonterra Opens North American HQ, Research Centre in Chicago

Fonterra Chairman Henry van der Heyden said Fonterra would use its new base in Chicago, part of a relocation from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to allow it to work more closely with its North American customers.

26/06/08 The world’s largest dairy exporter, Fonterra Co-operative Group has opened its new corporate headquarters for North America and a new Application and Sensory Technical and Development Centre (CDC) in Chicago, Illinois.

In officially opening the new headquarters, Fonterra Chairman Henry van der Heyden said Fonterra would use its new base in Chicago, part of a relocation from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to allow it to work more closely with its North American customers.

“This move puts Fonterra closer to key customers, suppliers and centres of dairy research in an area that is one of the heartlands of dairying in the United States,” said Mr van der Heyden. “We have long-standing partnerships in the United States, it’s a large and strategically important market and one where we’re growing our business.”

The new Chicago Development Centre (CDC) will make it simpler and more effective to commercialise scientific innovations from Fonterra’s research and development hubs in Palmerston North, New Zealand, and Melbourne, Australia. The location of the centre will allow more innovations to be tailored specifically to the needs of Fonterra’s customers operating within the US and Canadian markets.

“Fonterra sees exciting opportunities in its US business and we want to grow it together with our key customers,” said Martin Bates, Fonterra USA’s President and Chief Operating Officer. “We also want to use the US as a supply base to allow us to work with our international customers to ensure quality exports are sourced from the US to meet growing international demand.”

“And the Chicago Development Centre means that our customers can provide us valuable feedback on our products as they’re being developed, especially in the fast-growing health and nutrition sphere.”

The US relocation has been assisted by a US$1.14 million investment package from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

Fonterra USA is a fully-owned subsidiary of the New Zealand-based dairy co-operative. More than 50 per cent of the skim milk powder sold by Fonterra internationally last year was manufactured in the US.

Aside from Fonterra USA’s dairy commodity, value-add specialty ingredients and branded consumer goods businesses, Fonterra is also a partner in DairiConcepts, working with the largest dairy co-operative in the US, Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), to process milk from DFA members into proteins, milk powders and specialty ingredients. Fonterra also works closely with Dairy America, a group of nine US-based co-operative dairy companies, to export US origin milk powder into the global marketplace.

Fonterra USA’s new offices in Chicago has been home to around 50 employees since June 1. Mr Bates said he hopes that this will grow to more than 80 once the transition has been fully completed.