New Chairman And Board For NZAEL

NEWS RELEASE

4th July 2011

New Chairman And Board For NZAEL

New Zealand Animal Evaluation Limited (NZAEL) has a new chairman and new board.

The appointments follow a review of the governance and structure of NZAEL commissioned by DairyNZ in August 2010. The review team was led by Fonterra director Jim van der Poel and reported to the DairyNZ Board early in 2011.

DairyNZ chairman John Luxton says the review found that changes were needed in relation to the structure, process and support of NZAEL to address the identified issues and to position NZAEL and the industry to deal with future challenges that it faces in relation to the National Breeding Objective.

“As a consequence, DairyNZ has appointed a new chairman and a new director to the NZAEL board. The new chairman is Warren Larsen, a professional director who has considerable experience in the dairy industry, as CEO for the NZ Dairy Board for nine years and Bay Milk Products for 10 years prior to that. He is chairman of Centreport Limited, deputy chairman of Landcorp Farming and a director of Air New Zealand,” says Mr Luxton.

Mr Larsen says there are many challenges ahead of the board.

“Continuing to improve the contribution genetics can make to increasing the performance of our national dairy herd will be the key focus of NZAEL’s work. There is much for us to achieve, and I look forward to addressing the challenges to the benefit of New Zealand dairy farmers,” he says.

Also new to the board is Massey University Professor Robert Anderson, who is Pro Vice-Chancellor College of Sciences, who chaired the committee which conducted a comprehensive review of the New Zealand Dairy Core Database in 2009.

They will join existing directors Massey University Professor of Animal Science, Director of Research and Commercialisation Hugh Blair, NAIT chairman Ted Coats, and DairyNZ director Michael Spaans.

Former NZAEL chair Philip Luscombe and directors Jake Chardon, Steve Ireland and Kevin Old have each dedicated several years’ service to NZAEL and are all stepping down.

“I would like to recognise all the former directors for their significant contributions to NZAEL. The National Breeding Objective has been a crucial part of the benefits farmers have enjoyed through genetic gain,” says Mr Luxton.

“I would also like to acknowledge and thank NZAEL manager Bill Montgomerie for his immense contribution to the company, and for delaying his very well-earned retirement until we were able to appoint his successor geneticist Dr George Cruickshank, who joins us from Sheep Improvement Limited.”

He says DairyNZ has also increased the skills available to NZAEL and pasture & animal improvement specialist Jeremy Bryant, who has recently joined DairyNZ, will be working with Dr Cruickshank.

Ends

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