17th November 2001

News

By Paul Mooney and Des Maguire

THE Department of Agriculture is to contact the Attorney General on the issue of Greencore's monopoly of sugar processing. This is in response to an IFA demand to Minister Noel Davern at a meeting yesterday (Wednesday) that the exclusive license given to the company be reviewed and the outcome presented to the DÄil. It also demanded that a regulator to the industry be appointed.

Meanwhile, the IFA will this morning (Thursday) go to the High Court and state that it has complied fully with the injunctions served upon it on Monday evening on behalf of Irish Sugar.

At yesterday's meeting IFA president Tom Parlon told Minister Davern that Greencore's use of its beet processing license was unacceptable. The terms of the license did not include the company making an 18 per cent margin on sugar at the expense of growers, he said. Greencore planned to in future consolidate the profits from its sugar division with other divisions in its annual report, he claimed, and this would hide the high profits it was making on sugar.

Senior Department officials at the meeting gave a commitment to contact the Attorney General on Greencore's processing license.

In the High Court today IFA is expected to defend its right to represent growers and to deny that it intimidated growers out of delivering beet or discouraged them from doing so.

It will contend that growers themselves decided not to deliver beet because they didn't know what they would be paid for their product and because Irish Sugar was attempting to cut overall beet payment by ten per cent. Growers have a right to make this decision, it will claim.

IFA also indicated yesterday it planned to contest Irish Sugar's observation of beet contracts. These, it maintains, require the company to conclude a price agreement for this year's crop without pre-conditions - which it has not done - and there is provision for mediation in the event of failure to reach agreement, a provision the company is ignoring, IFA says.

Earlier in the week Tom Parlon said he was extremely disappointed that Greencore was attempting to silence IFA through the courts rather than entering serious negotiations on the growers legitimate claim for a beef price increase. "Obviously Greencore would like to take out the IFA leadership and the national beet negotiators. IFA will vigorously defend its legitimate role as the democratically elected representative organisation of growers," he said.

Greenshare on Tuesday said it was requesting meetings with Greencore's institutional shareholders to explain to them that it was not in their best interests that current Greencore management remain in place. "This management has now created a war situation with a group of farmers who last year generated £26 milloin profit for Greencore," it said in a statement.

There will be a co-ordinated move at the next Greencore AGM to remove the management who are now threatneing the long term viability of the company, it said.

Albert Reynolds willing to mediate

IFA president Tom Parlon yesterday (Wednesday) again offered to have talks with Irish Sugar without pre-conditions in order to resolve the price dispute and get factories back to work.

The offer by former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds to mediate between the growers and Greencore still represented the best opportunity resolve it, he said. Greencore's dispute with its own beet suppliers could only be settled if the sugar monopoly was genuinely committed to serious negotiations without preconditions, he said.

However, Irish Sugar yesterday continued to decline the offer of mediation. At a meeting with Minister Davern, chief executive Dr. Sean Brady said agreement on an independent system of beet price adjudication and a guarantee of no interruption in beet supply was necessary, an Irish Sugar statement said. This, he told the Minister, would allow negotiations on the re-opening of his company's sugar plants.

Any grower who is not happy with beet price always has the option not to seek a beet contract next year, he also said.

Irish Sugar claimed to the Minister that unlawful IFA action encouraged growers to breach their beet supply contracts and engage in behaviour obstructing beet deliveries to its plants.

In other developments this week, numbers of beet growers picketing outside the Carlow and Mallow sugar plants swelled following news of the court injunction on IFA.

A haulier who attempted to deliver in a load of beet to the Mallow plant early on Monday morning eventually turned away after demands from picketers that he wouldn't drive through them

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