Meadow Foods looks to trim ‘uneconomic’ milk producers
© Tim Scrivener Milk processor Meadow Foods has served notice on a number of its farmer suppliers in what it refers to as a “housekeeping” exercise.
The company has offered them 12 months to either find a new buyer or retire from the sector.
It is understood that affected producers are located in Cumbria, and in the processor’s main Cheshire/Shropshire/Staffordshire milk pool area.
See also: Midlands dairy accused of ‘protecting margins’ with price changes
Supply chain director Jim Bebb said: “We have given this notice for a number of reasons.
“The Cumbrian guys are far west Cumbria, and a few others have been given notice because of size.”
Mr Bebb described a scenario where, as individual farmers got older and closer to retirement, they might progressively downsize.
“We may be picking up just 500 litres a day. What we do every couple of years is we give those guys a year’s notice.
“It’s very sensitive as nobody likes being told that they are small, but it becomes uneconomic to collect.”
Mr Bebb would not be drawn on the numbers involved other than to say it was less than 20 and was spread across more than one milk field.
‘Never a better time’
“We have to give them 12 months’ notice and we do so at this time of year because there is never a better time than the autumn to find a new milk buyer,” said Mr Bebb.
“We try and do it sensitively as this is affecting peoples’ livelihoods.”
Meadow Foods was established in 1992 by the Chantler family and has grown progressively to a scale where it now handles about 450m litres a year from 400 milk producers, with sites in Chester, Peterborough, York and Dolgellau in north-west Wales.
Dairy sector consultant Chris Walkland said rationalisation of milk suppliers was an inevitability, as processors sought economies of scale to remain viable.
Other recent examples include Saputo, which shed some dairy farmers in the South West earlier this year, and Lacatlis, which did the same in Scotland in September 2024.