Mona dairy gone bust

[AlCapone]

Mona dairy on Anglesey has gone bust owing farmers £1,600,000
Only been going for 2 years
Bad management???

 

[Nearly]

Why do dairies go bust just before the 18th of the month.

Would @Bald Rick care to comment?

 

[dinderleat]

Isn’t the factory separate side of the business?

 

[Yale]

The Welsh assembly need to look at themselves. Propping up an airport while legitimate businesses go pop without help.

 

[Bald Rick]

The Welsh assembly need to look at themselves. Propping up an airport while legitimate businesses go pop without help.

£3m Assembly grant money says otherwise …

 

[Bald Rick]

I see Ackerman has come out with a statement saying that he hopes to strike a deal with the receivers

I can’t think there’ll be a queue of farmers ready to supply them though

 

[Enry]

Mona dairy on Anglesey has gone bust owing farmers £1,600,000
Only been going for 2 years
Bad management???

2 months more like it....

 

[Bald Rick]

Anyone else wondering if there might be a Dutch buyer in the wings.....

 

[Yale]

£3m Assembly grant money says otherwise …

How much to save it?

Surely the business model is sound or they wouldn’t have got the £3 mil.

 

[Bald Rick]

How much to save it?

Surely the business model is sound or they wouldn’t have got the £3 mil.

There’s the rub ….

Wont be a tremendous value in secondhand stainless steel and the building is probably leased as it’s on an industrial estate.

Business model was a movable feast but what I fail to understand is why it took them so long to get up and running. They should have been making cheese at least two years ago.

Something is a bit smelly tbh

 

[Oldmacdonald]

Something is a bit smelly tbh

2 month old milk?

 

[PDB]

Did they actually ever make any cheese and get it to Holland?

 

[Kiss]

There’s the rub ….

Wont be a tremendous value in secondhand stainless steel and the building is probably leased as it’s on an industrial estate.

Business model was a movable feast but what I fail to understand is why it took them so long to get up and running. They should have been making cheese at least two years ago.

Something is a bit smelly tbh

I remember it been talked about in 2014 like it was going to happen soon!

 

[Dougalhtid]

I remember it been talked about in 2014 like it was going to happen soon!

Where’s all the milk going that was going there?

 

[Yale]

Where’s all the milk going that was going there?

@Baldrick

 

[Cowabunga]

I believe that only one long established dairy herd was supplying them and that was about a hundred miles away down some ridiculously poor roads for a truck. The rest are almost all, if not completely all, recently newly established new herds and that is doubly tough on them if they are owed a lot of money. Were they selling some of the more remote farmer’s milk on the spot market so that other dairies were picking it up? I can’t see the sense of a truck travelling so far and wide to get a load.

Just how many weeks worth of milk does the dairy owe these farmers? I believe they were paid weekly rather than the usual monthly, so with a bit of luck they will not lose more than a couple of weeks worth. It’s still money that these farmers probably cannot afford to lose of course.

 

[Enry]

I believe that only one long established dairy herd was supplying them and that was about a hundred miles away down some ridiculously poor roads for a truck. The rest are almost all, if not completely all, recently newly established new herds and that is doubly tough on them if they are owed a lot of money. Were they selling some of the more remote farmer’s milk on the spot market so that other dairies were picking it up? I can’t see the sense of a truck travelling so far and wide to get a load.

Just how many weeks worth of milk does the dairy owe these farmers? I believe they were paid weekly rather than the usual monthly, so with a bit of luck they will not lose more than a couple of weeks worth. It’s still money that these farmers probably cannot afford to lose of course.

Suppliers apparently left a number of buyers inc arla and Meadow and Glanbia to join them because price looked good for spring calving without any seasonality. 31 in total according to Farmers Weekly. They were picking milk up in Cheshire and Shropshire and down in your neck of the woods I believe?
Talking to a rep who deals with a couple of affected farms, the original payment terms weren't honoured and he said they are owed for 3 weeks or so - being spring calvers, it would peak production I guess. Meadow picked milk up after but there has been some quibble over payment for that too apparently. https://www.farmersguardian.com/news/4321707/farmer-reaction-collapse-mona-dairy

 

[Cowabunga]

That farm, which I know well and is the old established one, is fully 105 miles from the factory according to Google Maps.
I fail to see Mona’s rationality or business proposition for having almost exclusively Spring calving herds supplying them relatively expensive milk, very expensively hauled from great distances, when there is usually plenty of relatively cheap spot market milk sloshing around looking for a home at that peak time. I fail to see how they would make it pay and indeed so have their bankers apparently.

Assuming 350 cows have calved and are now at peak yield and being served, that’s 350 times 30 litres [25 off grass?] times 21 days at a rough figure of 40ppl, which adds up to a POSSIBLE £88,000 loss of income. That is frightening, plus whatever probably much lower price they are now forced to accept to move their milk as distressed producers. I know that I would be mightily pee'd off and personally distressed if that happened to me.
They should know that it is not the end of the world though and they will get over it. Probably be less trusting of start-ups promising the earth with no prior trading history, no matter who fronts the company.

 

[jackrussell101]

Amelca, DFB, Farmright, Tomlinsons, Pensworth, Mona... the list is endless

 

[Cotlandfarmer]

I doubt milk haulage is what put Mona under, 105 miles isn't that far to haul milk these days.
Glanbia haul hundreds of thousands of litres of milk from pembrokeshire to the kingdom of Baldrickshire daily.

I've heard that one possible contributing factor to Mona's problems was that they didn't have a license to produce cheese/cheese products, thus causing any product made unsalable.