Dale Farm confirms another exceptionally strong business year

He explained: “Our business year ended on March 31st past. However, we won’t be in a position to go public with full results for the last financial year until June. Our milk suppliers have seen the outworking of these results as the Board agreed a 13th payment of 1ppl on all litres supplied in the 2025/26 year, which was paid out in April.”

A combination of three factors has driven growth at Dale Farm. These are: a 16% increase in the milk volumes supplied to the processor over the past two years, the coming on stream of its new cheddar capacity at Dunmanbridge bringing capacity to 80,000t and the ability to sell the additional cheese produced to customers in 40 plus countries around Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

Nick Whelan: “Initially, we thought it would take six years to meet the full capacity of the new cheese plant. As it turned out, we achieved that milestone in one year, given the favourable economics and weather experienced last year.

“In response to these developments Dale Farm has committed to bolstering the capacity of the cheddar facility by adding an additional 20,000t capacity at the Dunmanbridge site.

“Work has already started to this end. It should be completed in October of this year. At that stage Dunmanbridge will have an annual cheddar production capacity of 100,000t, making it the largest facility of its kind in Europe.

Meanwhile, international milk output continues to grow.

“We are looking at global, year-on-year, increases of 4% since the beginning of the calendar year,” the Dale Farm representative commented.

“But in countries like Germany, the comparable figure has come in at 6.7%.”

Throughout most of 2025 and the first two months of this year a number of factors have combined to deliver enhanced milk volumes. These included: strong calf prices and an attractive milk-to-feed price ratio.

Adding specifically to these factors in Northern Ireland has been the availability of improved genetics; the greater availability of new technologies and the improved management skills that have been consistently applied by local dairy farmers.

Nick Whelan again: “Over the past five years, we have seen the average milk sold per cow on Dale Farm supplier farms increase from 7,200 litres per lactation to over 8,000 litres. By any yardstick, this is a significant level of improvement in cow performance.”

The global increase in milk output has however outpaced demand for the majority of dairy products in recent months. This has been evident as market prices have corrected downwards over the past six months. Milk producers have been protected somewhat through this period but ultimately the markets impact milk price paid, which has been evident since February within the Dale Farm milk pool.

The market weakness alone would be concerning enough for farmers, but we are now in a period of political unrest created by the ongoing conflict in the Persian Gulf which brings additional challenges for milk producers.

“Fertiliser, fuel and feed prices have strengthened significantly since the end of February,” said Whelan.

“As a result, significant numbers of Dale Farm suppliers are now operating at or below their cost of production.”

Looking ahead, Dale Farm’s Group CEO sees a future for dairy which is borne out by our ongoing investment plans. He said, Northern Ireland is an exporting region and to compete globally we must be able to demonstrate sustainable production and processing practices to enable growth in revenue for Northern Ireland’s dairy sector.

“Sustainable growth is a must for all players in the dairy industry,” he stressed. “The long-term global demand for dairy products continues to strengthen, but food retailers and consumers totally buy-into the sustainability agenda in every sense and the collective industry must embrace this, the same must be said of the Stormont Executive.

“Northern Ireland has a uniquely advantageous sustainability support scheme already in place. It is based on three pillars: carbon reduction, improved genetics and a comprehensive soils’ scheme, with a funding commitment ring fenced to aid delivery.

“But we need to see change implemented at a much faster pace, were these government policies are concerned.”

According to Nick Whelan all farmers must buy-into the sustainability agenda, without exception, if we are to have sustainable growth here in NI.

“It’s that important,” he stressed.

Dale Farm’s CEO concluded: “Demonstrating our local sustainability advantages is the route out of commodity markets and the means of achieving value added returns for our farmer members. These additional returns are a must to tackle the inflationary headwinds faced at farm and processing level.

“Further investing in new technologies will help make this a reality.

“In the case of Dale Farm, a recent development to our farmers portal has been completed which is accessed via the co-op’s web site.

“This development enables a two-way communication process between the co-op and its farmers to ease the flow of data required to assist the co-op on its sustainability journey.

“There will always be an onus on dairy farmers to supply the highest quality milk, fully Red Tractor assured whilst meeting the sustainability needs of our customers. This commitment from producers must be matched on the part of processors by delivering commensurate producer milk prices. Dale Farms end of year results set against the milk price paid in the past year confirms the sustainable growth that the co-op continues to secure.

“This is a good news story for our farmer shareholders: one that can be built on successfully into the future.

“Another initiative that Dale Farm will be executing after their results have been audited will be the issuing of bonus shares to members to further align with milk volumes.

“This reflects the increase in milk volumes that we process and the impact this is having on the overall net worth of the business.

“No doubt this issue and many more will be key talking points on the Dale Farm stand at Balmoral Show 2026.”