The Irish Farmers Journal has seen a copy of a letter which was sent last March to certain member co-ops of Ornua asking that their chairs and CEOs step down from the board of Ornua.

The letter was sent from Denis Cregan as head of the governance review committee to the CEOs and chairs of the affected member co-ops, before he took over as Ornua chair in June.

There are 34 member co-ops of Ornua and it is understood that only co-ops that had conflicting or potentially conflicting business with Ornua were sent these letters. This would indicate co-ops including Glanbia, Dairygold, Aurivo, Arrabawn and Lakeland all received letters.

In the letter Cregan asked the co-ops to nominate other representatives to the Ornua board who did not sit on their boards and were not party to commercially sensitive information.

Cregan was and still is the only director on the Ornua board who is independent of the member co-ops.

His letter also asked CEOs and chairs of the affected co-ops not to participate at future Ornua board or board committee meetings. He gave them a deadline of September to nominate new representatives.

The issues around the Ornua board table have been festering since last October when Glanbia announced it was entering the US market with its Truly Grass Fed cheese brand. The move put Glanbia in direct competition with Ornua’s Kerrygold brand.

It is understood that since then, the Ornua board had become “dysfunctional”, with some members recusing themselves from significant portions of board meetings if there were potential conflicts of interests.

Dairygold’s proposal last week for a complete restructure of Ornua from its current co-op structure to become an unlisted plc would suggest that the co-ops refused to act on Cregan’s recommendations.