#Dairy hopes ride on supply deal, China

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FIFTH-generation dairy farmer Pat Neal keeps telling himself things will get better.
 
Neal has been involved in dairy farming all his life but as the drought has gripped his property at Oxley Island on the mid-north coast of NSW near Taree, he has often wondered if it is all worth it.
 
Energy and fuel prices have soared over the past year or two as milk prices have collapsed, making life tough for his Oxley Island Pastoral Company, which he runs with wife Louise Neal.
 
But there is now more hope for the future in the form of international capital, highlighted by the extraordinary bidding battle earlier this year for Victorian dairy group Warrnambool Cheese and Butter, which was eventually won by Canadian group Saputo.
 
And if a plan to get Chinese investors to bankroll the construction of strategically located milk powder plants in key parts of regional NSW comes off, the future will be even brighter.
 
“Strategic foreign investment is always good. Farmers don’t have a lot of spare capital,” Neal said.
 
But he had one important caveat for any foreign players seeking to invest in the sector. “They have to pay a reasonable price for our product,” he said.
 
“I’m all for diversification and having other options for our product, as long as they still pay a fair price.”
 
Neal’s company supplies milk to Norco, a co-operative in northern NSW owned by farmers in the region and southern Queensland.
 
Under last year’s much-vaunted Coles milk supply deal, Norco dairy co-operatives will this year take over supplying and bottling Coles’s house-brand milk for its stores in NSW and southern Queensland.
 
Under the deal, Norco’s factory on Queensland’s Gold Coast will be refurbished to handle about 70 million litres of Coles milk for five years.
 
Neal’s hope that the local market will recover is one of the things that keeps him in the business. “It’s a long-term decision. With milk production falling by 5 to 10 per cent a year and half our production destined for export, we won’t be able to supply the local market in a few years time,” he said. “The question then will be whether people want their milk home-grown, with the quality assurance that goes with that. I think they will.”
 
Source: The Australian

Mirá También

Así lo expresó Domingo Possetto, secretario de la seccional Rafaela, quien además, afirmó que a los productores «habitualmente los ignoran los gobiernos». Además, reconoció la labor de los empresarios de las firmas locales y aseguró que están «esperanzados» con la negociación entre SanCor y Adecoagro.

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