Irish dairy co-operative Dairygold is preparing to invest Eur130 million in its processing facilities in Malow, Mitchelstown and Mogeely. The move is in preparation for the ending of milk quotas in 2015 which offers Dairygold its first real opportunity in more than 30 year for substantial dairy growth.

Dairygold currently processes about 960 million litres of milk annually (equivalent to 18% of the Irish milk pool) from its 3,000 dairy suppliers. The planned capacity expansion would allow Dairygold to process an extra 23 million litres of milk per week, in addition to its current peak of 30 million litres per week.

According to chief executive Jim Woulfe, the Dairygold team is excited about the opportunities and confident about the company`s ability to process and market up to 50% increase in milk production by 2020.

Glanbia, the Irish and international nutritional solutions and cheese group, is reported to be considering investing more than Eur50 million to establish a new greenfield dairy manufacturing site in Ireland. The idea is bring the new plant on stream in time to meet the expected upsurge in Irish milk production following the abolition of milk quotas in 2015.

Denmark, the Netherlands and Cyprus were the only EU Member States which exceeded their milk quotas in the 2009/2010 quota year, triggering superlevy fines totalling Eur19m. This compares with the Eur99m triggered last year and Eur340m the previous year.

Following the increase in quotas agreed under the 2008 CAP Health Check, Italian production finished within quota for the first time, as global EU production finished some 7% below global quota volumes, compared with the 4.2% margin in the 2008/09 quota year (April-March).

“Although these figures confirm that Italy has finally managed to stay within its quota, the 2009/2010 quota year will only be remembered for the particularly difficult market situation witnessed in so many Member States,” comments Dacian Cioloş, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development: “Through our High Level Group established specifically to examine the market crisis, we have studied the situation carefully, and I am optimistic that the proposals that I will present in December will enable dairy producers to respond better to evolutions in the market and provide a more stable environment as we move towards the end of the quota regime in 2015.”

The Netherlands and Denmark exceeded their ‘deliveries’ quota by 0.4%, and Cyprus by 0.3%, triggering fines of Eur13.03m, Eur5.68m and Eur125,000 respectively. The Netherlands also overran its direct sales quota by some 2 268 tonnes, resulting in a further levy on direct sales of Eur631 000. Based on Member State annual declarations, all other 24 Member States were within their quotas.

Although decisions in 2008 (quota increase and changes in the fat correction system) increased the scope for production considerably in 2009/2010, an increase in deliveries was only registered in 10 Member States (Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Luxemburg, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland). In fact, global deliveries were down 0.6% – reflecting the difficult market situation – with a decrease of more than 2% in 11 Member States (Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, France, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Sweden). After fat correction, deliveries in 15 Member States (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden and United Kingdom) were at least 10% below their national quota.