The 63-year-old, who milks 170 cows on one of Australia’s oldest operating dairy farms in the shadow of a dormant volcano at Camperdown, in the state’s southwest, has for years been a loyal Murray Goulburn dairy co-operative man.
For the past 18 years, Mr Munro’s milk has been picked up daily from his small dairy by a tanker from Murray Goulburn — the big Victorian farmers’ co-operative owned by its 2500 farmer-suppliers — and processed at its Koroit factory near Warrnambool into butter and milk powder.
Mr Munro and his son Jono, 26, have stuck loyally to supplying Murray Goulburn through the past 18 months of the dairy industry crisis, at a time when more than 500 of its once-dedicated farmers have switched to rival processors paying better farmgate milk prices.
“We stuck with them through the crashed prices in April last year, the clawback when they tried to take money back off us that we’d already been paid for our milk, and even through the low milk price they offered us at the start of this season,” says a rueful Mr Munro.
“But this is it, I’ve had a gutful, and I’m afraid the end may be in sight for the co-operative anyway because with its current problems, I can’t see how it will survive.”
The last straw for Mr Munro came last week when Murray Goulburn’s annual results revealed a $371 million loss for 2016-17, an annual milk supply that had plummeted from 3.6 billion litres to two billion litres in just 18 months and a once dominant dairy co-operative brought to its knees by what he sees as poor decisions by management.
Yet for overseeing that catastrophe, new chief executive Ari Mervis was paid $1.4m for just five months’ work, including a $550,000 performance bonus, while former acting CEO and chief financial officer David Mallinson raked in $1.54m for the year, and a cash bonus of $116,139.
To the battling Munro family — who admit there is now no beer in the fridge, no holidays and no trips to the city to barrack for their beloved Geelong footy team because they simply cannot afford it — the insult of Murray Goulburn directors’ bulging pay packets was deeply felt.
“This is supposed to be our company, but you look at these blokes getting paid the million- buck salaries at a time while Murray Goulburn is unravelling, and can’t but think we are being played for fools,” Mr Munro said.
His views are typical of many MG farmers who attended meetings with the company’s management around Victoria last week.
Fury at the executive salaries and the payment of bonuses is intense.
Many farmers also asked questions about how the co-operative’s board of directors is now considering sale offers for the former $3bn business from big dairy players believed to include Bega Cheese, Canada’s Saputo, China’s Bright Foods and France’s Lactalis, trading in Australia as Parmalat.
For a tumultuous sale of the large Victorian dairy business to proceed — bids are being considered this week — all farmers who currently supply MG with milk will be given the opportunity to vote.
Mr Mervis said it was farmer-suppliers such as Mr Munro who would ultimately decide the destiny of the once-mighty co-operative when they voted on any future sale, merger or dissolution.
Source: The Australian
Link: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/companies/failing-murray-goulburn-coop-leaves-dairy-men-with-sour-taste/news-story/f8f5edeb05686171ee28ddc576df7fdf
