Mountain Milk is still weeks away from sending its first tanks of premium Alpine Valleys milk to the processors but chairman Stuart Crosthwaite says the work getting to this stage has been non-stop.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The farmer-owned co-op has contracted to supply 20 million litres of milk to Freedom Foods from July 1 and was expected to take on more suppliers in the second half of the year.
“There are some great opportunities out there and we do need the next year to really try to navigate what field we’re going to play on because there’s some great value out there and we can get much better milk prices than we’re getting,” Mr Crosthwaite said.
“It’s a matter of making sure the risk profiles are OK and we’re not setting ourselves up for a massive fall.”
Mountain Milk emerged during the last months of Murray Goulburn, established by four Kiewa Valley dairy farming families who were disillusioned by the path MG was on and how their premium milk was processed and marketed.
The new co-op was set up through support from Farming Together, a resource for primary producers to help collaborate, value-add, build marketplace strength and boost returns – the main intent was to provide another choice for farmers in the community to send their milk somewhere else.
A key motivation for the co-op remains to have Mountain Milk branded product on shelves in some form..
The co-op will launch a website in coming days, which will help spread their profile and mission.
“We’re now in a dairy world where the bulk of processing in the country now is done by investor-owned companies, so milk price is always going to be second to shareholder returns,” he said.
“We’re really concerned about that. We could see the writing on the wall with Murray Goulburn, they weren’t performing and they ended up collapsing … And to be honest it has never been a decision people up here have had to make because there’s only ever been the one processor.”
On Tuesday, May 29, Mr Crosthwaite will speak at a Border Leadership Forum event on the theme of Game Changers, about the rise of Mountain Milk and tackling the challenges of breaking from long-held traditional practices.
He will be joined by the creator of Cultivate Farms, Sam Marwood, who established an online platform to help match young families wanting to be farmers but without the land to landholders who were considering retirement but without a traditional succession-plan pathway.
