Dairy Ireland conference to highlight changes post-quota

Dairy Ireland’s annual conference will take place in the Firgrove Hotel, Mitchelstown, Co. Cork on Thursday, 25 July. The theme of this year’s conference is “Moving Forward with Confidence.” This event will bring together key Irish & European leaders within the dairy industry. The conference will be opened by recently appointed minister for state at the Department of Agriculture,  Tom Hayes, T.D.

FrieslandCampina board member Frans Keurentjes will give an insight into the success of FrieslandCampina. Of particular interest to Irish dairy farmers will be the recent announcements by Dutch dairy processors to invest over €700 million in processing facilities over the next two years. This investments are equivalent to almost a €0.05 per litre investment.

There will also be a panel discussion about future strategies within the dairy sector which will be chaired by Walter Power of Dairy Ireland. This panel will include: Frans Keurentjes, board member of Friesland Campina, Europe’s leading dairy co-operative owned by 16,000 dairy farmers in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium; Jim Woulfe, CEO of Ireland’s second largest dairy co-operative Dairygold; and Barry Henry, acting head of corporate banking with Rabobank, a global food and agri bank

Finance expert John Crawley will present a paper outlining on-farm cash-flow and business management. Dairy Farmers considering expansion will find this talk particularly useful as they prepare for the abolition of milk-quotas in 2015. The conference will close with a short introduction by Dairy Ireland of a new milk pricing policy.

In related news, Bord Bia, The Irish Food Board, has produced a new video promoting Irish food after the quotas: