While they’re not out of the woods yet, Murray and Margaret Turley must be counting themselves very lucky as their South Island farming interests appear to have weathered the mycoplasma bovis scare intact.
The Turleys own a 28% share in Dairy Holdings, the South Island-based farming giant that is Fonterra’s biggest customer. Now based in Ashburton, Dairy Holdings has $1 billion in assets and is New Zealand’s largest corporate dairy farmer. Its 59 dairy farms produce 17 million kilograms of milk solids from 50,000 milking cows.
Though the numbers are impressive the people behind Dairy Holdings, particularly the Turleys, remain low key. Upon making the NBR Rich List for the first time in 2014, Murray Turley said it was “a bit embarrassing really, as we’re pretty humble people and we like to keep under the radar.”
But keeping under the radar becomes harder the more business success one enjoys. Recently, Murray was named joint winner of the productivity grower award at the Australasian Syngenta Growth Awards. This time he wasn’t there on behalf of Dairy Holdings – rather, it was his own Turley Farms that stole the spotlight.
Based in Temuka, Turley Farms is a 2930ha organisation that grows potatoes, cereals, onions and hybrid seeds. The Syngenta judges praised the farms’ embrace of techniques aimed at reducing waste and enhancing the environment.
Alongside Dairy Holdings and Turley farms, the Turleys also have holdings in onion and potato packhouse Southern Packers, as well as the Farmers Mill flour mill. Murray is also chairman of the Rangitata South Irrigation Scheme.
The Turleys have always stressed cooperation instead of competition with fellow farmers, a policy they attribute to the runaway growth of their farming empire. They live in Canterbury.
Photo: Otago Daily Times
2018: $150 million