The Irish Creamery Milk Supplier’s Association (ICMSA) has welcomed a decision by Lakeland Dairies to pay farmers an end-of-year bonus and called on other processors to follow suit.
Lakeland yesterday (Thursday, January 12) announced that an additional payment of 0.6c/L, including VAT, or 0.5p/L will be made on all litres of milk supplied in 2022.
The board chose to hold with its current monthly milk price for supplies during December.
Chair of the ICMSA Dairy Committee, Noel Murphy said that the significant returns from the milk market in 2022 had rightly been reflected in the Lakeland bonus payment.
He said that the onus was now on the boards of all other milk processors to calculate an end-of-year bonus for their suppliers.
Murphy said that this is “in recognition of the huge efforts made by those farmers to the buoyant market returns earned in 2022”.
“It is fair to say that 2022 was a record high milk price for both farmers and processors, but it was also a record year for high input costs year incurred by all actors in the industry.
“The final payment for 2022 is to be paid this month and ICMSA is calling on each co-op and processor to file an end-of-year bonus in the same way as has been announced by Lakeland.
“It’s very notable that this bonus comes on top of the fact that Lakeland was one of the highest paying co-ops in 2022 and farmer-suppliers to other co-ops will conclude that if Lakeland can pay this bonus, then there’s absolutely no reason why all the other processors should not follow suit and announce similar measures.
“ICMSA looks forward to every co-op announcing a similar measure and can assure any processor not inclined to step up to the Lakeland mark that their farmer-suppliers will be demanding to know the reason why,” Murphy said.
The ICMSA Dairy chair noted that 2023 likes like it could be a completely different year compared to the past 12 months.
He said dairy farmers are already contemplating a more volatile market with input prices set to remain high for the first half of the year.