Over the last week I’ve had the chance to sit down with a number of dairy co-ops, including Ornua, along with our agribusiness editor Lorcan Roche-Kelly and deputy editor Aidan Brennan.

Steady would probably be the word that would best describe the reported financial performances we have seen so far. In a world full of volatility, steady may not be a bad place to be.

There also appears to be some positive sentiment around global dairy prices towards the end of 2026 as production trends correct to a projected increase in global grain prices.

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Some are pointing to increased volatility across both input costs and sales revenue as being a continued cause for concern, with planning very difficult in a world where increasingly, nobody knows what might happen next.

One thing that stands out is the farmer-central ethos in the co-op movement, with leadership teams making decisions to strengthen co-ops through acquisitions, streamlining businesses and in turn reducing costs along with delivering added value to their business.

On pages 26-27 in the agribusiness section this week, Lorcan Roche-Kelly reports on the first 10 months of financial reporting from the newly formed ArraTipp co-op in Tipperary.

ArraTipp has quietly gone about their business in reducing debt levels by a considerable amount and returning a profit of €2.3m in their first year, while also delivering a solid milk price to its farmers.

Longer term, there will likely be more mergers in the Irish dairy co-op structure, and reading the ArraTipp story may give some confidence to co-op members who are apprehensive about change to the national co-op structure.

We also report on the 2025 Ornua results in this week’s agribusiness section. The remarkable success story of the Kerrygold brand is the envy of many countries. It is the number one butter brand in Ireland and Germany, while also sitting at number two in the United States, placing Kerrygold Irish butter as a leading global brand.

Ornua also has ambitious growth plans with a headline figure of growing the value of their brands to €3bn by 2030.