Dairy industry consolidation the only option

EARLIER this week I shared a platform with the chairman of Fonterra, which is effectively the entire New Zealand dairy industry.

Henry Ven Der Hayden and I had been invited by a national dairy farmer group to debate the prospects for the milk industry from New Zealand and Irish perspectives.

Mr Van Der Hayden is passionate about farmers having control of the dairy industry and the need to apply truly commercial market-led policies when developing the sector in New Zealand. The results are startling. In 1984, Ireland and New Zealand had similarly sized milk pools of about five billion litres.