Earlier this week, Agriland was invited to Donegal Creameries to celebrate its 125th year in operation.
The plant in Killygordon, Co. Donegal, is a major part of Aurivo’s dairy business where they process over 140 million litres of milk providing fresh milk daily for over 25% of the Republic of Ireland consumers.
On the day, the milk plant was presented with the minute book from the original committee meeting in 1898.
Aurivo, which was Connacht Gold at the time, purchased Donegal Creameries in 2012, and ever since, the milk pool has grown significantly with over 200 million litres coming from Co. Donegal and Northern Ireland.
With the end of milk quotas in 2016, Aurivo has seen a 60% growth in its milk pool from 2015 to 2023.
The future of Donegal Creameries
From a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report, the area in which the Aurivo co-op operates has some of the cleanest waters in Ireland.
Aurivo dairy general manager, Stephen Blewitt told Agriland how the recent change in nitrates derogation did not have a serious affect on Aurivo’s milk supply.
“We have only one milk supplier in the whole of Co. Donegal that was over the 220 derogation, so the recent changes to derogation has been a slight challenge, but thankfully not a major challenge to the Aurivo cooperative,” he said.
However, about 25% of the overall number of Aurivo suppliers are in derogation, so, Aurivo has been making as many submissions as it can to both Europe and the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine about the importance of dairy in the region.
“A recent Ernst and Young report, showed that dairy farming was worth €2 billion to the region that we operate, in the western border region, and that is vitally important as we don’t have many of the large multinationals.”
Blewitt went on to say that they are “confident in the medium-term, that common sense will prevail” when a decision is made on the derogation as their suppliers have the lowest stocking rates with the cleanest water in the country.
Sustainability is at the helm as the target of 35% scope one and two emission reductions will be achieved before the government deadline of 2030, with ongoing hard work with their milk suppliers to achieve the 25% scope three reductions, according to the co-op.
The Future Milk Sustainability bonus where the processor financially rewards farmers for undertaking sustainability measures will improve their carbon footprint.
One of the measures farmers can choose, is to attend a water training programme and will be ran over the next two weeks with five training events across the region.
Milk supply and brands
In comparison to other cooperatives around the country, Aurivo’s milk supply at the moment is not significantly back with just a 2.5% reduction in supply.
Costs and the way the co-op operates is constantly monitored by the operations team with the summer shift starting later in the year this past spring at the Ballaghaderreen plant.
The hard spring did not affect Aurivo as much as other parts of the country as their suppliers are more used to the longer winters, the processor has indicated.
The main brand is the Donegal Creameries liquid milk brand, which was celebrated for 125 years of operations with also the Connacht Gold brand which is a liquid milk brand too.
Connacht Gold butter was the fastest growing real butter product in Ireland in 2023 and is sold at all major retailers nationally.
In October 2023, Aurivo purchased the Dawn and Arrabawn liquid milk brands from Arrabawn cooperative and Blewitt said that they are “starting to get to know our new two new brands of Dawn and Arrabawn and working hard on that”.
Aurivo also has the largest organic brand on the island of Ireland called Organic For Us, making them the largest organic liquid milk brand with retailers.