Mona Dairy aims to relaunch and secure producers next year

The owners of Mona Dairy have confirmed plans to recommence operations at its processing site in Anglesey by the end of February next year.

Mona Dairy went into administration back in June, leaving its 31 farm suppliers out of pocket and in search of a new supplier.

However, managing director Ronald Akkerman has told Farmers Weekly it is in the process of securing new investment from cheese buyers and aims to relaunch in early 2025.

See also: £29m owed to unsecured creditors by Mona Dairy

Mr Akkerman said: “We have signed a deal to acquire the assets from the administrators and we are now putting together a plan to reinstate the cheese production line.

“We will then have to look how to rebuild the milk pool thereafter.”

He added that, initially, the milk will be predominantly sourced by commercial suppliers as many ex-farm suppliers will still be tied into notice periods with other processors.

However, Mona Dairy does intend to reach out to new and former producers to offer supply contracts.

Assurances 

Mr Akkerman added: “Of course, people will be worried we might end up in the same place, so we will need to provide payment assurances going forward.

“A lot of those [in the original milk pool] are seasonal producers, so we will definitely reach out to them.

“The old business owed them £1.2m in total, so we will put an offer on the table that sees them compensated in some way, shape or form, in exchange for a new contract.

“Some of those guys may say absolutely not and some of them may be open minded as long as they can get appropriate assurances.”

He concluded: “The whole reason we set up the plant was to provide a secure outlet for milk from seasonal producers”

Future expansion

Mona Dairy plans to recommence production initially at a smaller scale and then install more equipment and production lines throughout 2025.

The company made a number of redundancies earlier in the year, but did retain 15 employees throughout and will look to take on additional staff in 2025.

There may be further calls by Mona Dairy to try to secure additional investment from the Welsh government, which previously provided a £3m grant prior to the company falling into administration.

The site aims to work with just over 100 producers by the end of 2026 and process around 200m litres of milk a year.