The many lives of Fonterra’s new boss Richard Allen
Saturday, 9 May 2026
Fonterra’s new boss is a New Zealander who has led a truly international life - having spent long spells of his life in Indonesia, Taiwan, China and the United States.
Richard Allen is a week into his job as chief executive of the giant farmer-owned dairy cooperative.
He’s tasked with completing its transformation having taken over from former chief executive Miles Hurrell, whose farewell party was held at Fonterra’s Auckland headquarters this week.
In 2019, Fonterra was in a mess, and farmers were angry. Today, Allen heads a cooperative in transition, set to focus on its food service and ingredients businesses, having sold off its Mainland consumer brands business.
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Allen is being dubbed a “homegrown leader” having been with Fonterra for 18 years. He joined as a graduate. He has subsequently headed up both its ingredients and food service businesses, so he knows his way around the two parts of the co-operative that will remain after the sale of Mainland to global dairy giant Lactalis.
At 6-weeks-old, Allen started his international life when his parents, both teachers, moved to Indonesia for work.
He made a brief return to New Zealand at age 5, but then was whisked off to Taiwan until he was 13 or 14, when he returned to finish his schooling at Auckland’s Glendowie College, and do a commerce degree at the University of Auckland.
He loved the experience and with lengthy spells in China and Chicago during his nearly two decades with Fonterra, Allen has visited on his three children the international childhoods he says he has loved. Family history repeated.
When he moved to China in 2015, he and his wife had a six-week-old daughter. His other two children were born there.
Allen’s time overseas left him able to speak Mandarin, which he brushed up on during his most recent stint there in 2015 to 2018.
“That was a really exciting time in China. They were still doing 9%, 10%, 11% GDP growth.”
He was heading up Fonterra’s food service business in China, supplying the restaurant and cafe trade that was booming as the Chinese middle class expanded rapidly and was developing a taste for the good life.
His language skills stood him in good stead, as China takes products made from about a third of the milk Fonterra farmers supply the cooperative.
“Mainland Chinese in particular really appreciate people have taken the effort to learn the language.”
Allen is a foodie and he says speaking Mandarin added real spice to eating out in China.
China has one of the world’s great cuisines.
“That’s one of the best parts of China … you eat better when you can speak the language.
“Food and cooking and has been a big, big part of my life. Cooking is probably the thing I enjoy most,” he says. “It’s a big part of who I am.”
Allen says he probably doesn’t have a signature dish, as he likes to cook all sorts of food, but every Sunday is curry night in his household, with a new variant each week whipped up by Allen.
“That's a little family ritual.”
He feels blessed to live in a country with such great produce.
“The quality of the food here is just phenomenal. The freshness of the fish, the quality of the meat, the vegetables, is like nowhere else in the world, so for someone like me, that's pretty important.”
Allen struggles to name a favourite cheese, but plumps for either a well-aged cheddar, or a nice gooey, brine-washed brie.
He is also fond of Kāpiti Kikorangi Blue, which was sold with Mainland to Lactalis, and which, he says is “without doubt the best blue cheese in the world”.
It is a big thing to head up an organisation as large, and strategically important for New Zealand, as Fonterra, but after 18 years with it, Allen says he knows the organisation well, and should he have a moment in which he feels in need of a bit of support, he has Hurrell available until September to smooth the transition.
He describes Hurrell as a mentor, and watched him “right the ship” after farmer-shareholders had had their faith in the company tested.
He was heading up Fonterra’s Farm Source, which provides dairy farm essentials, including products, tools, and services for agricultural operations, in 2018 and 2019 when Fonterra was having a very tough time
“I think [farmers] were very, very fair in their feedback, to be honest. We'd lost trust with them. We’d made some bad decisions. We’d underperformed, and for us it was about getting out there, and having a bit of humility, putting our heads down and righting the ship under Miles’ leadership.”
Having spent so much time in the US and in China could be useful for Allen, as both the US and China are important markets, and in a new age of geopolitical instability, the dairy giant has to navigate choppy international waters.
“As a country, but particularly … our agricultural sector, are so heavily reliant on free trade and a rules-based system. We are out there every day advocating for free trade, advocating for diplomacy, advocating for people to just play by the rules.”
That's a critical part of New Zealand's wealth and future, he says, and despite geopolitics, “we rely on them every single day. It’s great to see new trade deals being signed. That's a good sign that there is still strong appetite out there in the world for trade”.
Allen feels it is a good time for dairy, which he says is having a “renaissance” moment as more and more consumers turn against ultra-processed food.
No Fonterra boss can be unaware of the contribution to climate-warming emissions that comes from New Zealand’s dairy sector, and indeed the long-term threat to it from changing weather patterns and a warming planet.
Just this week, the Climate Change Commission published its latest Climate Change Risk Assessment which showed the medium-term climate threats to dairying.
Allen says New Zealand dairy farmers have made huge strides in efficiency, and he hopes incremental improvements on many fronts, and technological developments, will also make a difference.
Among all the things humans do that produce carbon emissions, he thinks producing food is of utmost importance, and he hopes Kiwi dairy farmers continue doing what they do for centuries to come.
But his final message is for farmers is that post the Mainland sale, Fonterra will continue the focus on deploying capital sensibly, responsibly, and most importantly, profitably.
“The next era is about how do we take that position and ensure that we grow it so that, we continue to have a coop for another 150 years.”