this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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Te Wai Pounamu / South Island
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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.