Farmers’ concerns grow over Dairygold, Reox

THE deterioration in the trading outlook for both Dairygold Co-op and Reox Holdings has raised major concerns among farmers.

IFA National Dairy Committee chairman, Richard Kennedy, last night strongly criticised Dairygold for cutting their milk price by 2c a litre for February, and by a further 2c for March, leaving suppliers facing a March price of 20c per litre plus VAT.

Farmers were furious that the board of Dairygold were leading milk prices down, turning their back on a history of strong, competitive prices reflecting a diversified product mix, he said.

Mr Kennedy added that Kerry Group’s €140m purchase of Breeo Foods yesterday “was excellent news for Dairygold, and this gave the co-op the opportunity to revisit their disastrous milk pricedecision”.

Mr Kennedy had demanded an urgent meeting with the board of Dairygold.

Meanwhile efforts by the Irish Examiner to contact the chairman of Reox Holdings, Flor Riordan and his Dairygold counterpart, Vincent Buckley, failed again yesterday.

The Reox spokesman said however that MrRiordan refused to talk to the Irish Examiner because of the nature of its coverage of the crisis engulfing the two north Cork companies that employed 3,200 back in 2003, before Mr Henchy was appointed chief executive, and whose numbers have been slashed to 1700 in the meantime.

Mr Henchy departed as chief executive of both Dairygold and Reox in recent weeks.

It is understood the boards acted because of the severe downturn facing both businesses.

They have denied that Mr Henchy was sacked from either job and they have refused to make any further comments despite mounting farmer and worker fears for the future of the entire group