USA – The giant merger between HP Hood and National Dairy Holdings (NDH), which would have created one of the USA’s largest dairy companies, has been swapped for another deal.

Instead of following the original plans, Hood will enter into a scaled down deal with NDH and co-operative Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) It is likely that antitrust investigators would have blocked the original proposal, as it gave DFA a hand in 90% of the milk that flows to processors in New England.

Under the new proposal Hood would own 30% of NDH and DFA would own 15% of Hood.