this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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Still no answers from Great South and some starting to question why?
Invercargill Councillor calls for 'please explain' from Great South
A couple of comments at the end of the article provide some idea of the feeling of locals about the ratepayer investments and potential conflict of interest surrounding the decisions being made.
I may have missed this originally, but it seems the company building the oat milk factory is 49% owned by the Southland councils? I'd also be pretty annoyed about putting all that work into it then losing out without explanation.
One step more complicated than that. The 4 southland councils (District and Regional) are 48% shareholders of Great South. Great South is 49% shareholder in New Zealand Functional Foods (NZFF) who are proposing to build the Oat Milk factory in Canterbury instead of north of Invercargill.
To make it even worse one of the Great South board members (the Chair) is also on the NZFF board and is not a Southland resident.
It appears to be a complete shit show, and no clear detail of why the decision to move the factory has yet been given.
The article you linked in your comment above says:
Which made me think the other councils would own the rest. I had a look on the companies office website, starting from the company we know the name of:
NZFF is owned 51% by K ONE W ONE and 49% by SOUTHLAND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AGENCY.
SOUTHLAND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AGENCY is owned 48.7% by Invercargill City Council, 48.7% Southland District Council, a bit over 2% by the Gore District Council, and a bunch of others making up the last 1%.
K ONE W ONE is owned almost entirely by Steven Tindall, founder of The Warehouse. It's 90% owned by him, then the other 10% is owned split 4 ways including himself again, his wife, and what I presume to be two business partners.
It seems so odd to me to announce to the media you are not building in Invercargill but you haven't decided where you are building. Was this some tantrum where they didn't get the answer they wanted from someone so the board just decided screw it we can't work with them and ran to the media about it? Given the councils own 49% of NZFF I would think they are well within their right to get an explanation for the decision, even if they can't change it. After all, the directors have to do what is best for the shareholders by law, so they need to be able to prove their decision making process.
Yeah, my bad wording. Invercargill CC are 48.7% shareholders, Southland District Council are the same 48.7%, Gore District Council and Environment Southland (Regional Council) have less than 2% and a couple of Trusts with less than 1%.
Mayors of ICC and SDC have made noises of support of the move but haven't justified it or made meaningfully comment.
Ratepayers, who provide significant funding to Great South each year have been left in the dark.
The recent Great South annual meeting, which the two major mayors were part of made no mention of Oats or Oat milk, at least on record.
As a ratepayer I'd at least expect to know the reason behind the move.
I hope you get some answers! At least this still drives demand for Southland oats, but if I was a rate payer I'd also want answers. Hell, I'm not a Southland rates payer and I still want answers!
This is the recent meeting I was referring to - not an annual meeting...:
Great South Joint Shareholders Committee Agenda
Great South have there fingers in a lot of pies which in theory should pay off for Southland, but Great South is relatively 'new' in its current form and much of what they 'sell', never seems to come to fruition. There is a fair amount of history in this organisation as it was previously known as "Venture Southland" with the "Southland Regional Development Strategy" (SoRDS).
They started of fairly small but seem to have grown exponentially with quite a large number of staff popping up on there website now. There are quite a few in the community who question if this organisation provides value for money? I'm still on the fence, but changes like the one outlined above with little detail and little to no input from the community who pays for the 'service' just feels wrong to me.
The article is from several days after the meeting, so I wonder if the next meeting will involve discussion of it? Great South may not have known about the decision until reading it in the media.