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.

The Co-op board has decided to hold its next strategic planning day in February. The board is very pleased with the way the first 18 months of trading has gone, and improvements to processes in the factory. The planning day will enable the board to chart a path for the business over the next few years. Current work on costing production, researching markets and options for improving efficiency will provide a sound basis for planning.

Under the constitution of the co-op one third of the board of directors retire each year, although they are eligible for re-election. Being the first year of operation lots were drawn to decide which three directors would retire. Andrew Horsbrugh, Frank Brenmuhl and Graeme Nicholas were chosen to retire. All three made themselves available for re-election and were declared elected unopposed at the annual meeting of shareholders held in Rolleston on 30 July. You may like to find out more about the eight directors.

A strong representation of shareholders attended the first annual meeting of the co-op at the Rolleston Community Centre today (30 July, 2016). The annual reports of the board and auditor were received, the auditor appointed and the three directors due to retire but available for re-election were declared re-elected. The reports are available here.

The first AGM of Walnuts NZ Co-operative Ltd will be held at 3pm on Saturday 30 July. Shareholders will receive further details within the next couple of months. Under our constitution, directors’ terms are for three years. To set up the required pattern for the future, three of the seven current directors are retiring this year (and are making themselves available for re-election): these are Graeme Nicholas, Frank Brenmuhl and Andrew Horsbrugh. You are welcome to nominate other shareholders to stand in this election at the AGM, and you will receive nomination papers prior to the AGM. The total number of directors is seven under our constitution.

Voting at the AGM – Under our constitution, shareholders have one vote for every 500 shares (or part thereof) they hold. So, for example, shareholders with 150 shares or with 400 shares would each have one vote, a shareholder with 5000 shares would have 10 votes. Voting is capped at 20%, so if any grower owns more than 20% of the total shares of the co-operative, they still only get 20% of the votes – this is to protect the influence of our smaller shareholders.