Lakeland AGM hears of strong progress

In addition to AGM business, the Society voted to consolidate and simplify the shareholding structure of the co-operative, to adjust categories of shareholders, and overall to update the Rules of the Society, in line with best practices in corporate governance.

The members in attendance heard that Lakeland’s business continues on a strong growth path.

Lakeland Dairies’ Chairman, Niall Matthews said: “The strength and resilience of the co-operative can be seen in the results achieved for 2021 where Lakeland Dairies reported a 20% increase in revenues to £1.09bn across our four operating divisions of Food Ingredients, Foodservice, Consumer Foods and Agribusiness.

“While paying a competitive milk price, operating profit of £23.6m increased by 8% and EBITDA (Earnings before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation) increased by 5% to £46.4m. This demonstrates a continuous underlying positive trend where EBITDA has increased on a recurring basis for several years.

“Over the past decade, Lakeland has invested £160m in new facilities and technologies, increasing our milk supplies to a record level of 2 billion litres from 3,200 family farms. In that time we have enabled large scale consolidation, cost reduction and the creation of economies and efficiencies in the dairy industry across the northern half of the island. We continue to prioritise progress and success for dairy farmers. We have the financial capability to consider further investments across any of our 8 dairy processing sites, if that makes sense in the future,” said Niall Matthews.

Lakeland CEO Michael Hanley told members that they could expect good returns from dairying for 2022 despite the higher on farm input costs.