Tipperary ICMSA leader says Glanbia cheese facility will be judged on supplier price

ICMSA president Pat McCormack, while wishing Glanbia well with its proposed cheese facility in Kilkenny, has said that farmer suppliers will judge the investment on the basis of whether it does, or does not, return a stronger milk price to them.

Glanbia announced a €140m development in partnership with Dutch company Royal A-ware this Tuesday, which will see 80 jobs created at Belview, County Kilkenny, along with 100 in the construction phase.

Mr McCormack said that the announcement was significant and obviously marked a strategic decision on Glanbia's part to diversify its product range into new cheese products aimed at continental customers and away from our traditional trade with UK customers.

"On the face of it, this is a recognition that whatever happens with Brexit – and our anxieties about it are very well known – that operations like Glanbia with a massive export business will have to look past our traditional markets and products and really actively look at new markets, greater concentration on continental markets, and developing the products preferred by those markets,"  said the Tipperary farmer.

 Mr McCormack said that in terms of its members the farmers producing the 450 million litres of milk that will go into Belview and be turned into the new products, it was "no secret" that ICMSA had several differences of opinion with Glanbia about the way they arrived at farmer milk price, particularly when their price drifts below current per litre based on the Ornua PPI, as wasthe case now. 

"But we do respect their commercial strategic sense and obviously wish them well in their venture with Royal A-Ware, while reminding them to always remember whose work it is that they’re ultimately building this €140m facility on," he said.

The farm leader said that farmer suppliers will judge the investment on the basis of whether it did, or did not, return a stronger milk price to them and they were "absolutely correct to judge it on that basis".