Westland Milk Products Announces Appointment Of Director

The Board of Westland Milk Products is pleased to announce it has unanimously recommended the appointment of Bob Major as independent director of the board, replacing longstanding director and ANZCO Foods founding director Sir Graeme Harrison.

Westland Milk Products chairman Matt O’Regan says Mr Major brings an impressive 30 years of dairy industry and agribusiness expertise to Westland.  “We are fortunate to have acquired a director of Bob’s calibre whose global dairy knowledge will add significant expertise and depth to the board.”

Mr Major has a strong leadership profile having held various senior executive roles within Fonterra, the New Zealand Dairy Board and New Zealand Milk Products. His broad commercial experience in the global dairy and food industry led to him being assigned responsibility for various mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, government relations, global strategy, sales and marketing and research and development.

During his tenure at Fonterra, Mr Major was responsible for all marketing activities in support of Fonterra’s ingredient and growth businesses as Director of Fonterra Innovation and was also Managing Director of Fonterra China.

As Group Director of Global Strategy at the New Zealand Dairy Board, Mr Major was responsible for the organisation’s global strategy, mergers and acquisitions and regulatory and legal activities.

Mr Major also has considerable experience in Governance, having sat on a number of Boards including joint ventures in Taiwan, Europe, China and dairy-related organisations in New Zealand including Livestock Improvement Corporation and the forerunners to Dairy NZ, Dexcel and Dairy Insight.

Mr Major is currently Chairman of The Mud House Wine Group, an award winning winery based in Blenheim and is a director of five other subsidiaries within the Mud House Wine Group. He has also held Advisory board roles with a number of private New Zealand food and agribusiness companies.          

Mr Major will commence his position from 30 November.