Under siege Australian food and beverage company Freedom Foods has sold off its specialty seafood division ahead of its annual meeting next week.
The publicly-listed company says it is looking to make a fresh start after years of big losses and will take a necessary name change to its AGM.
Freedom Foods, with dairy plants at Shepparton and Sydney with cereal and snack products produced in Melbourne and in the NSW Riverina, wants to call itself Noumi Limited.
One of the company's biggest success stories is its plant-based products, particularly Milklab almond milk, with sales growing by almost 50 per cent in the past year.
After selling off most of its cereal and snacks business to Arnotts earlier in the year, Freedom Foods is now disposing of its seafood products division with tinned Brunswick sardines and Paramount salmon brands in Australia and New Zealand.
The Australian Tempo Group is the new owner with a gross return of about $3 million for Freedom Foods from the sale
The company will come under close attention at next week's AGM after posting a loss of $53 million this year against $175 million the previous year.
The company faces a possible spill motion given it received a strike last year over shareholder opposition to remuneration payments.
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The company says it has responded with a complete personnel change of its board and new corporate leadership.
Gone is its chief executive, the chief financial officer, the chief operations officer, the chief marketing officer, the chief customer officer, group general counsel, company secretary and others.
Freedom Foods is majority owned by the Perich family of NSW through its Leppington Pastoral Company.
Ron Perich has stood down as director with his son Michael Perich stepping up to become the company's chief executive this year.
The company has also undergone a $265 million recapitalisation this year.
The company has had a traumatic period of internal and external investigations with almost $600 million in losses and writedowns.
Inventory audits of the business last year discovered outdated and obsolete UHT milk and cereal products in warehouses dating back to 2017.
There are class and other legal actions still pending plus an investigation by the Australian Investigations and Securities Commission is still ongoing.
The name change, necessary because of brand name was sold with its cereals and snacks division, "makes a clean break with the past and the emergence of a reset transformed organisation", the company says.
"The name represents a new start for your company," CEO Michael Perich said.
The company is urging shareholders to vote for the name change but also for the new remuneration proposals after last year's backlash.
The company said it its "remuneration framework" had been fully overhauled.
The online AGM will be held at 10am on November 18.
Freedom Foods has 560 employees across four locations in Australia and two in Asia.
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Chris McLennan
ACM national rural property writer based in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria. Career journalist. Multi award winner.
ACM national rural property writer based in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria. Career journalist. Multi award winner.
