Suppliers left adrift by Titanic sinking of DFB

Jun 13 2009 by Karen Dent, The Journal

As the crisis at collapsed dairy co-operative Dairy Farmers of Britain (DFB) reached its peak, Northumberland-based industry expert Bruce Jobson offers his perspective on what went wrong.

Talks set to continue

TALKS were set to continue over the weekend with a potential buyer for DFB’s Blaydon dairy.

Receiver PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), supported by regional development agency One NorthEast and Defra, was attempting to hammer out of solution to save the site, which employs 290 people and is supplied by 288 farmers.

PwC announced the closure of DFB’s main dairy at Bridgend in Wales yesterday and shut its Lincoln dairy on Wednesday.

The receivers are continuing discussions to sell four Welsh depots connected to the Bridgend dairy and have already sold DFB’s Lubborn Creamery in Somerset and the cheese factory in Llandyrnog.

DFB was set up in 2002 through the merger of Zenith Milk and The Milk Group, using the “new generation co-operative model” commonly used in Europe.

Members invested more that £52m to expand the group, which included buying ACC from the Co-operative Group in 2004, the Lincolnshire Co-Operative Society’s in 2005 and the Bridgend Dairy in 2006.

But PwC was called in on June 3 following the loss of DFB’s contract to supply milk to the Co-op supermarket.