New Zealand’s Fonterra Cooperative Group is considering a full or partial listing on the stock exchange.

The drive behind listing it is to give the giant cooperative, which is New Zealand’s biggest single exporter, greater access to capital, and reduce the risk of aging farmers leaving the cooperative and causing a run on the balance sheet.

A full or partial listing would be a huge boon for the New Zealand Exchange (NZX) and for regional areas, where farmers would on average hold shares worth an estimated $1 million per farm.

With an estimated value of $7.92 billion, Fonterra is comparable in size to current NZX behemoth Telecom, which has a market capitalisation of $9.47 billion. Fonterra has an annual turnover of $13 billion, outstripping Telecom’s $5.8 billion.

Fonterra chairman Henry van der Heyden said all options were on the table but that retaining farmer control of the company would be non-negotiable.

Fonterra would launch a full review of its capital structure early this year with hopes of developing a proposal for its farmer shareholders to vote on before the end of 2007. Any big change to the capital structure would require the support of at least 75% of farmers.