Membership information
The Association has 50 member businesses, with around half being agriculturally-based cooperatives
To begin with bringing together agricultural cooperatives, membership was extended in 1996 to include a wide variety of cooperative businesses. The largest member is in the dairy sector while the smallest are community cooperatives.
During the 1990s, there were many mergers of agricultural cooperatives, so while there may be fewer cooperatives than previously they tend to be larger. Non-agricultural members include:
- Foodstuffs – NZ’s largest supermarket chain in which the grocery store owners own the grocery wholesale business
- PSIS – offering a nationwide network of financial services for any New Zealander
- Plumbing World – a chain of plumbing stores owned by New Zealand plumbers
- Interflora – a cooperative of flower sellers and part of a global network, with members in 15 countries
- Capricorn – a tri-nations cooperative of vehicle panel-beater businesses in three countries with headquarters in Perth, Australia
- Canterbury Education Services Society – supplying schools with many of their needs
- Community cooperatives are small, mostly Maori, communities that have chosen to form cooperatives to conduct activities and for the purposes of Treaty of Waitangi settlements with the Crown
Cooperative and mutual businesses that join the Association do so to:
- support the solidarity of cooperative activity, particularly through lobbying government, the opposition parties and officials
- network with directors and senior executives from other cooperative and mutual businesses, learning from the experience of others
- receive a steady stream of information from the Association through Cooperatives News and the NEWSFlash
- be able to send people to cooperative-specific education and training seminars
- have access to the member only area of this website, which gives them information not available elsewhere
- receive support and advice through the Cooperative Advisory Group, which members tell us is absolutely priceless, and
- get a .coop web domain for their cooperative – right now the first year’s free
The Association represents member organisations on various issues, particularly when engaging with government, ministries and agencies, and bodies such as the International Accounting Standards Board.
If you want to form a co-op in New Zealand, you are encouraged to become a provisional member so that you can receive information and management guidance from the Association. See Starting a co-op.
As a membership organisation which receives no consultancy fees or subsidies, we believe it’s important to involve people who are looking to form a cooperative business in this Association.
Membership
