Some excitement is expected at Drinagh Co-op’s annual general meeting on Thursday evening, with a number of milk suppliers clearly still annoyed that they didn’t get a Carbery bonus for 2018.

On Thursday morning, an anonymous text was sent around stating that “a sale of Carbery under consideration” and “have your say at Drinagh AGM tonight”.

Even the sender of the text knows that’s not true - Drinagh and Carbery were quick to dismiss this as mischievous rumour when asked. Presumably the text was just the first of a few scud missiles to be fired up at the top table from the floor at the AGM.

Bonus

While the Carbery didn’t pay a bonus on 2018 milk, it topped up its new stability fund by €6m in 2018 lifting this rainy day fund to near €10m.

The fund is paid out when milk price drops below 30c/l before VAT.

However, Carbery and the west Cork co-ops are now relearning the old lesson that you can’t stop a payment that people have got used to.

In recent years, the bonus has varied from around 0.5c/l to 1c/l and for very large herd could amount to €10,000.

Suppliers to the four west Cork co-ops only learned that there wouldn’t be a bonus when it was revealed at the start of the year by a Lisavaird board member – that didn’t help.

What also didn’t help was that Carbery’s remuneration committee last year increased fees for farmers representing the four west Cork co-ops on the Carbery board.

The committee, headed by Peter Fleming, chair of the Carbery board, nearly doubled the flat payment to €16,000, while there’s also a payment per meeting attended.

The issues of milk suppliers’ bonus and directors' fees were both expected to arise from the floor at Thursday evening’s Drinagh AGM.

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