The CEO of Kerry Dairy Ireland (KDI) has said there will be no dairy industry in Ireland in future if young people are not encouraged into the sector.

“We want to get young people into dairying. Without that we’ll have no dairy industry here in Ireland in the next 10, 15, 20 years so we’ll do everything in our power to make sure we pay a very competitive milk price,” Pat Murphy said.

Challenges

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Speaking at the Frank Hayes Memorial Farming Seminar in the Listowel Arms Hotel on Monday night last, he also acknowledged the short-term challenges faced by the sector in trying to do so: “Unfortunately, we’re facing challenges on milk price over the next six to 12 months. There’s an oversupply across the globe and that has huge consequences in Ireland and across Europe.”

The event, which was part of the Listowel Food Fair, also heard how the impacts of the current glut of milk supply combined with geopolitical shifts, were feeding down the line and being felt at a local level.

“It affects us in Listowel. We’re selling butter. There’s now a 15% tariff on that.

“What happens with that is we put that 15% on the price of butter and the American consumer pays for that.”

Despite tariffs, dairy proteins were seeing an upturn in fortunes among US consumers and he felt that it had got the upper hand in the dairy versus plant-based protein debate.

“The plant-based initiatives that we saw over the last five or six years have plateaued over the last 18 months and a lot of alternative meat companies are going broke in US.”

Confined

The issue of generational renewal was not confined to farm level with a question put to Murphy in regard to succession within KDI.

In response, he said: “Innovation and continuing investment across the group was key to its future success. We spend a huge amount of time every year making sure we have one or two replacements for every position that we have in the organisation so there’s no fear of KDI in the future, this business is going places.

“The legacy of Kerry Group is very much lodged in all of us. Things like innovation and never standing still is embedded in all the employees today.”