To enter the meeting, shareholders and farmers got two emails – one with a link to the Zoom platform for the special general meeting (SGM), and another email with a link to the Bigpluse platform for voting.

After the meeting commenced at 2pm, the first 50 minutes of the SGM were dedicated to co-op directors and management explaining why the resolutions were going ahead and the benefits if successful. Some pre-submitted questions were also outlined.

Glanbia Co-op chair John Murphy outlined key issues and suggested if successful, he expected "the full deal to be completed by June 2022”.

The plc needs to get shareholders to back the deal in a vote next year. The chair outlined that the resolutions will extend greater flexibility to invest in the future and that he was very excited in what was a crucial day that was supported unanimously by the board.

CEO address

The chair then handed over to newly elected CEO Jim Bergin, who expressed his gratitude to shareholders. Bergin explained that being CEO was the pinnacle of his ambition.

He explained how he was seconded six months ago to work on this venture with Sean Molloy and that a huge amount of work has gone into it. He explained that if successful, it would create the largest co-op in the country, owned 100% by farmers.

Then at 2.50pm the meeting was opened to the floor and live questions were aired for and against the proposal.

Farmers raised their virtual hand on Zoom and some were selected to speak and unmuted by the organisers and then they had to unmute themselves to speak.

Which shareholders spoke at the meeting?

A number of farmers gave their opinion on what way they were voting and why or why not the proposals were the right or wrong move.

Some of those who spoke in favour of a yes vote included Stephen Arthur, who endorsed the deal on behalf of the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) dairy committee, Walter Power, Jim Mulhall, David Power, Seamus Phelan, Alan Stephenson, Tom Shortt, Larry Hannon and Shane O’Loughlin.

Many more asked specific questions about the resolutions live or pre-submitted around timing, detail, reasoning, etc. Some of those farmers included Patrick Doyle, James Roche, Shay Joyce, Jan Kennedy, Milo Power, David Lonergan, Shane Phelan, Michael Edwards, John Murphy, Bridget Brennan and Patrick Mahon.

End of live questions

At 3.25pm, the last of the live questions were asked and answered and then Glanbia explained how the voting was going to happen.

In order to avoid everyone logging on to the Bigpulse platform at the same time, shareholders with a surname beginning with A were allowed to start voting and every five minutes a new cohort of shareholders were allowed enter voting.

So by 4.15pm, all voters were allowed entry to the open voting and voting remained open until 5.45pm.

Voters cast their vote and got an email back to say what way they voted. Every shareholder has an email showing what way they voted in their inbox.

At 5.30pm, chair John Murphy came back to the special general meeting and declared voting would remain open for another 15 minutes.

At 5.45pm, he declared voting closed, but that crosschecking and verification was needed and that the result would be announced after that.

The result was announced at 6.15pm.

CEO of the Irish Co-Operative Organisation Society (ICOS) TJ Flanagan joined the Zoom meeting and gave the results of the vote to the Glanbia chair.

He explained all votes had exceeded 80% and were passed in favour of moving to the next phase of the buyout process.

The resolutions needed 50% majority for some, with a 66% threshold for others.

No more detail on the individual votes of the resolutions were announced.

As all resolutions were passed with the required majority, the proposal gets the green light to move to the next phase of the process to bring Glanbia Ireland back into 100% farmer control.

Did the technology work?

All in all, the technology seemed to work near perfect. Many farmers are well used to Zoom by now.

There was some feedback from speakers when they were asked to speak as many probably had the iPad or laptop on in the background, but it wasn’t that distracting.

The separate voting link also seemed to work without fuss. While the staggered opening of voting depending on your surname probably annoyed some with farm jobs to do, it prevented the voting system crashing, as has happened with some concert ticket buying opportunities.

The whole SGM and voting operation came across very professionally and very well organised.