What does Millstream Recycling do?

We specialise in the removal of surplus food products and food by-products from the food manufacturing, wholesale and retail sector. These products are collected and converted into animal feeds, biogas, fuels or compost. The food products we reprocess into animal feed include cereals, bread, chocolate, sweets, flours, pastas and cakes to name a few. In total, we recover 23,000t of animal feed per year.

What are the main challenges in your industry?

A lack of supply of surplus food here in Ireland means there’s a limit to the amount of animal feed we can produce. It’s also a capital intensive business. Our main focus is on quality standards as reprocessing food for animal feed is an exceptionally highly regulated industry. We are rigorously audited by numerous different bodies, which helps ensure the highest feed quality to customers.

Who are your customers?

We supply feed mills, merchants and manufacturers throughout Ireland, the UK and Europe. But we also sell direct to farmers every year. Our farmer customers are mainly beef farmers in the south east region but we also sell product to a number of pig producers. We typically have a set number of farmers that we can sell directly to because of the limited supply of product we have every year.

Have you had increased demand from farmers this year?

We’ve had an unprecedented number of calls from farmers looking for animal feed this year because of the fodder shortages caused by the drought. We were also asked by Teagasc and the Department of Agriculture how we could help address the fodder shortage in the country. To meet the extra demand we have begun importing by-product animal feed from the UK. We’re partnering with Sugarich, a UK company that re-processes surplus food, to bring in two feed products for Irish farmers that are high in sugar content (15%), oils (9%), starch (40%) and protein (10%). We will be able to bring in as much as 2,000t a week of this extra product to meet farmer demand.

What are these two products?

We’ve worked with animal nutritionist Gerry Giggins to select these two products. The first is called ‘MillRich Confectionary 760’ and is a mix of ground confectionary along with wheat and products from the bakery and cereal industry. This has 10% higher energy density than maize. The second product is called ‘MillRich Sweet Cake’ and is a mix of cake products, wheat, cereals, cocoa and grain flour that has 7% higher energy than maize. Both products are highly palatable for cattle because of the high sugar content and also high in energy that farmers can feed to cattle in a mix with forage.

How much do these feeds cost?

MillRich Confectionary 760 costs €249/t delivered to the farm in a 28 tonne load, while MillRich Sweet Cake 122 costs €243/t delivered in a 28 tonne load. For deliveries to Cork and Kerry there is an additional delivery charge of €11/t.