One billion litres of milk and counting at Dale Farm

This is a land mark moment in the development of the business.

Dale Farm chief executive officer, Nick Whelan, commented: “Milk supplies across Northern Ireland over the past 10 months have increased by 10%, year-on-year.

“Driving all of this has been a combination of factors: the availability of a strong milk price, competitive feed prices and the fact that 2025 has been a very favourable farming year up to this point.”

Ensuring that Dale Farm has been able to cope with all of this extra milk has been the availability of its second cheddar cheese plant, which was fully commissioned earlier this year.

Nick Whelan again: “The plant is already working at full capacity: that’s four shifts operating on a 24:7 basis. The only down time in the system is that required to carry out essential maintenance on the new facility.

“But it’s worth putting into context the scale of the increase in milk volumes we have witnessed over recent months.

“Our original development plan envisaged the new cheese operating reaching its full potential by 2028/29: so we are four years ahead of schedule in this regard.”

The capacity now at the Dunmanbridge site is 80,000t of cheese this year.

“With investment, we should be able to get that figure up to 90,000t,” Whelan confirmed.

His comments coincide with Dale Farm’s publication of its latest set of financial accounts. They make very upbeat reading.

“Our plan is to deliver on a number of key priorities for the business: maximise turnover and profits, manage debt and pay the best possible milk price to our farmer suppliers,” Dale Farm’s CEO confirmed. “And we are managing to achieve all of these objectives.”

He continued: “We have already paid back the borrowings linked to the development of the new cheese plant. On a daily basis we pay down the group debt with profits. In effect, our profitability is building our business brick by brick while we at the same time, continue to pay a strong price to our farmers.”

For the 12 months ending March 31st 2025, Dale Farm’s turnover increased, year on year, from £631.4m to £722.4m, while net profit before tax has increased to £31.9m (previous year £29.8m).

EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) also rose to £45.6m (previous year £44.9m). Operating profit grew from £37.5m in the previous tax year to £37.7m in 2024/25.

This is the fourth successive year of record results for the farmer-owned dairy cooperative,

Nick Whelan again: “Our focus, our drive and our decisions are about ensuring the profitability and sustainability of our farmers’ businesses. We are in the investment phase of our strategy cycle with a focus on production,

automation and digitalisation."

He continued: "We are pleased with the results, but we take nothing for granted. Food businesses require constant financial reinvestment guided by focused research and development.

“We are determined to remain innovative, constantly reinforcing our reputation for quality, consistency and sustainability, while investing in our people."

Dale Farm Chairman, Fred Allen, commented: "Last year, farm level input inflation was countered by higher market returns and, consequently, higher producer milk prices. We are pleased that we were able to pay a competitive, sustainable milk price with an average of 43.67 pence per litre paid in the 2024/25 year.

“Our focus will continue to be on achieving consistency of performance throughout our business, combining the expertise of our 1,300 farmers with the skills of the 1,200 people employed by Dale Farm to deliver sustainable profitability: as a team."

Meanwhile, dairy markets remain remarkably vibrant, despite the ‘tsunami’ of milk that has been produced in the UK and Ireland over recent months.

Nick Whelan concluded: “We may see some softening in business sentiment over the coming weeks. But the fundamentals of the world’s dairy markets remain inherently strong.”