When I spoke with Food & Drink Business in September last year, I talked about curiosity, and the importance of understanding not just what customers want but why it matters to them. I still ask “why”. A year on, the bigger question for me is what we do with the answer.
My philosophy is simple: if our customers grow, we grow. Starting from there changes how you set priorities, where you invest and how you show up for customers.
Organising around the customer
Over the past year we have sharpened Kerry ANZ’s commercial focus on where we can create the most value for customers. That has meant investing in people and capability and bringing more of Kerry’s global expertise into the local market. Our commercial, RD&A and operations teams now work more closely around specific customer opportunities and problems.
The structure matters less than what the customer experiences. Kerry is a large global organisation. If a customer has a problem to solve, our job is to bring the right capability to them, combining global technology and insight with local knowledge, relationships and application expertise in Australia and New Zealand.
Listening has to change something
I spend a lot of time with customers, across the industry and at our four sites. You make better decisions when you hear directly what is working, what isn’t and where a customer is trying to take their business.
But listening is only useful if you are prepared to change something as a result. Some of the most valuable feedback is not what you want to hear. Acting on it is what builds trust.
Over our past two Voice of Customer surveys we put more emphasis on communication and transparency, and our Net Promoter Score improved by more than 70 points. I am proud of that, but I don’t want us chasing a score. The comments are more useful than the number: they tell us what we are getting right, what we need to own and fix, and where we can help customers grow.
Partnership counts when things are hard
Heading into 2027, food and beverage manufacturers face pressure on ingredients, energy, packaging, freight and labour, along with weather disruption and geopolitical uncertainty. Suppliers are dealing with the same pressures.
Our responsibility is to mitigate what we can, be transparent about where cost recovery is necessary, and keep looking for ways to create value together. That means looking at formulation, process efficiency, waste, supply resilience and innovation for ways to offset cost.
The approach I believe in is to put the issue on the table early, be clear about what each side can and can’t control, and work through it together. Where can we take cost out? Where can innovation add value? What is the way forward that works for both businesses?
More to solve in the same brief
Despite the pressure, I am optimistic. Consumers now expect taste alongside nutrition, functionality, affordability and convenience, and manufacturers need all of that delivered efficiently on their lines. Customers are trying to solve more within the same brief. That is hard, but it is also where the opportunities are.
In practice, that might mean improving nutrition without compromising taste, bringing formulation costs down, simplifying a manufacturing process, or adapting a technology from Kerry’s global network for Australian and New Zealand consumers. Global capability only matters if it can be made relevant locally and turned into something commercially worthwhile for the customer.
The measure that matters
Curiosity is still where it starts. But the test is what follows. If a customer is growing because we helped solve a problem, unlock an opportunity or create a product consumers love, that is the measure that counts.
Michelle Thomson is general manager of Kerry ANZ.
