Co-op examines future role of plants
The future role of the plants which employ 600 people at Mitchelstown, Mallow and Mogeely is being examined by the €1 billion co-op as part of a major restructuring programme.
Chief executive Jerry Henchy said the society has carried out an analysis of all four sites and is assessing their suitability in relation to its product strategy.
“However, we will also look at any other possibilities including working with our neighbours to develop more efficient processing options if that is appropriate,” he said.
Referring to production efficiency and cost reduction, Mr Henchy said Dairygold is looking internally to see how best to upgrade some of its assets to move from four processing sites to two or perhaps one.
“We will benchmark the capital cost of all investments against acting in a federated co-operative processing manner with our fellow processors and we will move without pride or prejudice in the direction of shared processing facilities if it best serves our purpose.”
Mr Henchy said the process of benchmarking the capital cost of investments is still ongoing and no decisions have yet been made in relation to upgrading any processing sites. The current focus of Dairygold’s strategy is on rebalancing its product range away from commodities and towards value added products, particularly in the cheese area.
Mr Henchy, who was addressing members of the Guild of Agricultural Journalists, who were in Cork for their annual general meeting, said the co-op’s future processing strategy will not be some sort of a “big bang” with major and almost instantaneous changes.
“It will be a slow evolution over the next five years. We are not about to move into hasty decisions which may lock us into strategies which quickly become outmoded as the market continues to change.”
