(1880– ).

Dairy company organiser.

A new biography of Goodfellow, William appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

William Goodfellow was born at Paterangi, Waikato, on 26 May 1880 and educated at Auckland Grammar School. His first enterprise was an ironmongery business at Onehunga, but after he opened a branch at Hamilton in 1904 he became interested in the new trend towards cooperation in the dairy industry, and organised Waikato Cooperative Dairy Co. in 1908. Ten years later he was able to amalgamate the leading Waikato dairy companies into the New Zealand Cooperative Dairy Co., of which he became managing director. He was a member of the first Dairy Control Board established under the Dairy Produce Export Control Act of 1923, which he was instrumental in sponsoring. In 1925–26 he formed the Amalgamated Dairies and Challenge Phosphate Co. His public benefactions include £30,000 for a chapel at Auckland University and £20,000 in 1950 to endow a chaplaincy in memory of his son Richard Maclaurin Goodfellow. He was knighted in 1953.