Watch: 'I see 2025 being a positive for milk price' - Molloy
Tirlán CEO Sean Molloy believes that despite international market uncertainty, 2025 will be a "positive year" from a farming and milk price perspective.
Earlier this month, the company announced that it would pay a total of 50.08c/L (including VAT) for March creamery milk supplies. This marks a reduction from the previous month, down from 56.08c/L.
Speaking to Agriland at the Tirlán Dairy and Sustainability Awards at the Heritage Hotel, Co. Laois today (Tuesday, April 29), Molloy explained the reason for Tirlán's drop in milk price for March 2025.
"I have been articulating to our farmers that milk prices are operating at probably 48c/L to 50c/L. We had to make a realignment in the last month to get our price back closer to where the market price is," he explained.
"Our weighted average milk price last year, including constituents and including VAT, was somewhere close to 52c/l. This year that could be 10% ahead of that over the course of the year."
Today, Tirlán reported that its group revenue increased by 5% last year to hit the €2.66 billion mark against the backdrop of, what one of the country’s largest co-op’s described as, a “challenging year”.
With regard to market uncertainty related to US tariffs, the CEO believes there is still "a lot to play out".
"Tariffs in a small, open economy that exports internationally, are never a good thing. We are very much supporters of free trade," he continued.
"The industry, and indeed ourselves, are planning so far as we can. Uncertainty is not a good thing for business, because you don’t know what you’re trying to plan against.
"We have been through challenges before, be it Brexit, or Covid-19, or the Ukrainian–Russian war. We’re well used to that kind of planning. We would hope to see sense prevail and global trade be allowed to continue," he added.
Molloy believes that milk supply has not picked up across the world in the way that farmers "might have been envisioned it would".
He claims that "difficult supply" in parts of Europe is helping to create demand/supply tension which is "always helpful" as a supplier.
Molloy said: "What’s great for our farmers, is that milk volumes this year are going to be well up on last year, probably in the order of 5%. That shouldn’t be market impactful, because essentially you’re just catching up on the previous years when it fell.
"It also means our processing assets right across the industry, will be fully occupied. There might have been fears in some quarters that the assets wouldn’t be needed, that’s certainly not turning out to be the case.
"That does mean, that over that peak number of weeks that we’re dealing with, we will be talking to our farmers about being a little more patient in terms of the arrival times for the trucks, and the dispatch time for the trucks," he added.
The CEO also highlighted that Tirlán wants to "play it's part" by bringing in new suppliers in 2025.
He explained: "Since milk quotas were taken away in 2015, we’ve welcomed 580 new suppliers. Last year week took on 45; this year something in the range of the mid twenties will come to us.
"Once they are able to meet our quality criteria, and our milk purchasing criteria, we are more than happy to welcome them.
"We hope over the coming months, to be working very closely with new folk and encourage them to get into farming, because that’s a key challenge for the industry," he added.
