Lakeland Dairies Co-operative Society Ltd. has reported a 15% increase in revenues to € 545.5 million for 2013, yielding an operating profit of € 11.7 million, up by 9% on the previous year.
Group Chief Executive Michael Hanley said, “These are very satisfactory results which reflect the strength and competitiveness of the Lakeland Dairies business.
“Lakeland Dairies continued its growth and development and gained further momentum as a market leading provider of excellent dairy foodservice and food ingredient products. Buoyant world dairy markets, organic growth in customer demand and intense new business development activity yielded increased revenues and operating profits.
2013 turnover by division“All divisions performed to the highest standards of efficiency in meeting global customer needs. We maximised returns from the markets through the flexibility and scale of our processing plants, driving milk into the highest value product categories in line with market trends. Lakeland channelled the benefits of its business growth towards producers with highly competitive milk prices for its farmer milk suppliers throughout the year.“With a growing world population and the abolition of milk quota constraints in April 2015, the dairy sector holds considerable promise for the future. Lakeland has an intensive focus on new business development with high quality contracts and a growing customer base. Our dairy plants have world class technology, thereby maximising the value of every litre of milk sent to us for processing.
“We have successfully built, commissioned and paid for our new milk dryer at Bailieboro. We have the flexibility to operate our other dryers whenever required. Lakeland Dairies has an excellent dairy food ingredients and foodservice business. We are building a major new global logistics centre in Newtownards to complement our international distributor partnerships and we have access to all main dairy markets across the world.Shareholders Funds “Lakeland milk suppliers have indicated that they will increase milk production in the years ahead, taking our milk processing to over 1 billion litres annually by 2020. Our increased milk processing intake will also be supplemented by new milk producer entrants and conversions from other sectors to dairy farming, all of whom will be welcome.
“Our priority will be to achieve all future growth on a long term and sustainable basis and to minimise any future market volatility for our producers. We will continue to pay a leading milk price while pushing all of our growing profits back into Lakeland Dairies which will remain a farmer owned and farmer controlled co-operative, working successfully in the direct interests of its stakeholders.”
Lakeland Dairies is one of Ireland’s largest dairy co-operatives with major processing operations north and south. Lakeland collects and processes over 700 million litres of milk annually across 15 counties. It offers 170 high quality dairy foodservice and food ingredient products in over 70 countries worldwide, exporting close to 100% of its entire production capacity to global markets.