Who is popular today?

Celebrating Fonterra’s recent announcement of its plans to build a wood-fuelled biomass boiler at its Stirling cheese factory are Ingrid Leary and Bryan Cadogan (centre front) and (from left) Austrian company Polytechnik's Christian Jirkowsky, Pioneer Energy's Fraser Jonker, Pioneer Energy's Richard Ireland, Fonterra employees Todd Downie and Ian Hall, Fonterra's Richard Gray, Fonterra employee Craig Fonterra employee Craig Seddon and Fonterra Stirling senior environmental manage Hannah Furze.

The Cromwell-based charity Central Lakes Trust (CLT) came of age this year, and since its inception in 2000, has distributed more than $100 million in grants to a wide range of community projects and services throughout the central lakes area. It has $388 million in investment assets and owns a power company, Pioneer Energy, which is involved in revolutionary projects around New Zealand, from converting food waste to bioenergy, to processing forest slash for biomass fuel. It is a powerful alliance in more ways than one, as Mary-Jo Tohill reports.