Brave decision by Glanbia

FEW relationships in the world of business are stranger than that between Irish dairy farmers and the public limited company arms of their co-ops.

Unless co-ops are content to stay local, and can sell enough product locally to pay milk suppliers the prices they want, they have to expand.

In Europe, with milk quotas limiting the business, and with some of the highest milk prices in the world, a co-op must look to the world market, if it exhausts the sales possibilities at home.