Nearly half of milk suppliers to leave sector

GLANBIA’S expectation that 2,000 of its 5,000 milk suppliers will quit within three years underscores the massive change in the sector.

Since 2001 the group has lost 1,000 suppliers. That process is gathering pace as scale is required to maintain farmers’ living standards.

Professor Gerry Boyle, head of economics at Maynooth University, concludes in a study done for Glanbia that “significant scale is required to attain relatively modest income targets for dairy farmers of 106,000 gallons of milk now and 155,000 gallons by 2010.