Arrabawn in the money as profits climb

WITH the quota days due to come to an end in just over six weeks time, the Arrabawn Co-op, have announced a 60% increase in operating profits for 2014.

The co-op – the fusion of Nenagh and Mid-West Farmers co-ops – announced operating profits of €4.4 million for last year, an increase of €1.7m from 2013.

Five years of ‘significant capital investment’ have been credited with the profits hike at Arrabawn – Co-op CEO Conor Ryan has already predicted further gains through 2015.

Over the past five years, Arrabawn have spent €15.7 million in improving efficiency and growing capacity – the average price per litre paid to suppliers last year was 38.27c.

Conor Ryan said that five years ago, Arrabawn had acknowledged the ending of quota in 2015 and had put an investment programme in place to ensure they had capacity for suppliers as well as having a plant that delivered efficiencies and a more competitive milk price.

“Not only that, we have also focused on developing products and reducing dependency on basic commodities. This was all aimed at delivering an improved return for our farmers and it is now coming to fruition, with space for further improvements still ahead,” said Conor Ryan.

Last year, Arrabawn processed 310 million litres of milk were processed in 2014, an 8% increase on 2013 while net debt at the end of last year was down €880,000 to €9.25m.

Arrabawn Co-op Chairman Sean Monahan said that the positive results from 2014, reflected key strategic decisions that had been made on a number of fronts including product development.

“There’s room for further gains and real reason for us to be optimistic for the future. The outlook for Arrabawn is very promising now, which is good news for our suppliers, shareholders and employees,” said Sean Monahan.