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Aurivo wants more NI producers
With a new £23m milk dryer in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, currently being commissioned, west of Ireland-based Aurivo Co-op has confirmed that it is still in the market for new farmer recruits in NI.
The co-op is to host two producer meetings this month, for both existing and potential suppliers, on 7 May in the Lodge Hotel, Coleraine at 2pm, and The Silver Birch Hotel, Omagh, at 8pm.
In the last few years, Aurivo has grown its milk pool in NI, with local supply up 15% in 2018 and up 19% for the first four months of 2019. The recent growth brings the NI milk pool to around 80m litres annually.
In a statement this week, Aurivo Co-op CEO Aaron Forde said he was committed to NI suppliers, regardless of the outcome of Brexit. Even in the event of a no-deal, he said he was confident that Aurivo could make use of “inward processing”. It’s a system where a manufacturer in the EU can bring goods in from outside the EU customs territory tariff free, if the goods are to be re-exported outside the EU.
Nitrates derogation
DAERA received 472 applications for nitrates derogation for 2019, a department spokesperson has confirmed.
The figure is down marginally from the 480 applications submitted last year, but remains well ahead of the 310 applications received in 2017. A derogation allows the nitrogen loading limit from organic manure on grassland farms to increase from 170kg/ha to 250kg/ha. Farmers that operate under a derogation are required to prepare a fertilisation plan for the current season and then submit fertilisation accounts to DAERA the following year.
For farmers that are operating close to the 170kg/ha limit, another option is to export organic manure off-farm. A DAERA spokesperson confirmed that 1,629 non-derogated farms in NI submitted records of slurry exports during 2018.
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