The Irish Farmers Journal understands that the board of Kerry Co-op are favouring a single negotiator to lead talks between Kerry Co-op and Kerry Group around the future of the Irish operations.

While no decision has been made yet on who that might be, there seems to be a clear favourite candidate. Sources say John McKenna met with the board in June with a role leading the talks envisaged for him.

According to those sources, that John McKenna was previously at Ornua and spent some time as CFO of Westland in New Zealand.

A profile for John McKenna on LinkedIn, whose work history matches the above, shows that he lists his current employment as chief operating officer at BHSL. BHSL Group is a multi-disciplinary environmental engineering and environmental group of businesses head-quartered in Limerick. The company has undergone a rapid transformation over the past few years, with its chief executive targeting annual sales of €500m within the next five years.

That chief executive is Denis Brosnan, a man who is certainly familiar to anyone involved in Kerry Group, or Co-op.