Theo Spierings was in Europe when he first learnt of a health scare in China related to his company’s milk products last year. The chief executive of Fonterra, the world’s largest dairy exporter, jumped on a plane to Beijing and held a press conference.
About 150 journalists listened as he issued a full public apology, becoming a figure of some notoriety overnight. “It was front page,” says Mr Spierings. “I’m kind of known there, which is strange in a country of 1.3bn people.”
The recall by the New Zealand-based group is one cautionary tale among many for multinationals in China, where hundreds of millions of dollars have been paid in fines in recent years as regulation stiffens.