Natural Dairy dumps vice-chairman, ponders next move on Crafar farms
By Paul McBeth
Dec. 9 (BusinessDesk) – Natural Dairy (NZ) Holdings has dumped vice-chairman Graham Chin, leaving a question mark over
his statements that the Hong Kong company is mulling options for its stalled bid to buy the Crafar dairy farms.
Chin was voted off the board at Natural Dairy’s annual shareholder meeting yesterday, yet today a statement was issued
in his name by spokesman Bill Ralston saying it is seeking legal advice after the firm’s ‘agent’ in New Zealand, May
Wang, was bankrupted by the High Court in Auckland. Ralston said he is trying to clarify the situation.
Shareholders in the Hong Kong-listed company that’s looking to buy up tracts of dairy farms in New Zealand were almost
unanimous in their opposition to re-electing Chin to the board, and also elected not to reappoint executive director Yan
Feng.
Wang was bankrupted over the failure of her property development group Dynasty. She was fronting the Natural Dairy via
her UBNZ group of companies, and fell foul of the Serious Fraud Office, which is looking at the transaction between the
two companies.
Natural Dairy was hoping to break into China’s high-end dairy products, where demand for quality goods has surged amid
the melamine scandal in 2008, in what was to be a $1.5 billion buy-up of land and processing facilities, though the
failure to immediately secure the Crafar farms scaled back those plans.
The case provoked a public backlash and forced the government to back down on opening up foreign investment rules, which
instead clamped down on the Overseas Investment Office, particularly on farm sales. That came even while deals such as
the sale of shares in Synlait to China’s Bright Dairy have passed unscathed.
(BusinessDesk)