Dairygold committee members must do 25% of their trading with the co-op on entry to a committee, rising to 50% at the end of the first year and then to 75% for second and subsequent years, Dairygold chair Pat Clancy has said.

Answering questions from the Irish Farmers Journal, Clancy added that these levels are in place following a recent consultation with members, having previously been set at 50% for new members and 80% after the first year. Dairygold currently has 60 area committee members.

The Irish Farmers Journal looked at the rules of other processors on the island, to see how the Dairygold rules compare.

At Lakeland Daires and Kerry Dairy Ireland there is no minimum requirement for board or committee members to trade with the co-op – in the case of Kerry, the co-op had no trading division until January of this year.

At Tirlán, board and council members are required to achieve trading of 3c/l of milk supplied to the co-op. There is no minimum trading requirement for regional and area committee members.

Arrabawn requires board members to trade to 12c/l of milk supplied, while committee members are required to have 8c/l supplied of trading.

In west Cork, Lisavaird, Barryroe and Bandon are all at 8c/l, while Drinagh has a 10c/l requirement.

Aurivo has the highest per cent of trading in the country for board members at 80% (equivalent to just under 12c/l), but for committee members the level is significantly less onerous, set at between €1,500 and €3,000 of trading per annum.

In order to produce a meaningful comparison across the different rules, the Irish Farmers Journal looked at the trading requirement for a farmer supplying 500,000l at average milk solids. We used Teagasc profit monitor data for 2024, which shows total variable costs per litre are 22.6c, of which we estimate 14.85c/l could be spent at a co-op when calculating the Dairygold required trading level (see Table 1).