The board met on 3 February for a strategic planning session to look forward over the next three years and develop goals for that period. Critical Success Factors were agreed on at themeeting.  We decided that for Walnuts NZ to be successful it must be especially good at thefollowing activities:

1. Marketing and selling all our products to the most profitable markets
2. Efficient processing
3. Maintain the full support of our shareholders.

We analysed our strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities, and decided on the following specific objectives:

1. Walnuts NZ enjoys an engaged shareholder base as a result of being well regarded and successful. Growers become financially successful and enjoy participating in their industry and new participants are being attracted
2. Financially successful
3. Participating in high margin “Super Profit” market sectors
4. Significant improvement in operational efficiency
5. Build capacity to process and sell the increased supply volumes predicted in coming years
6. Committed and stable management team.

We are still working on the details of quantitative ways of measuring our success in these areas.