Ornua CEO John Jordan told the European Dairy Farmers (EDF) congress on Tuesday that the group is aiming for Kerrygold to be a €2bn brand by 2025.

Kerrygold is currently Ireland’s first ever billion-euro food brand and it is the number one butter brand in Germany, Jordan said.

“The German market has been hugely successful. If you go into a German retailer, the most frequently scanned barcode in the entire retail sector in Germany is the 250g packet of Kerrygold,” he said.

US market

Kerrygold is also the number two butter brand in the US, despite being twice the price of US butter.

We are a co-op of co-ops

Some 14,000 of Ireland’s 18,000 dairy farmers supply Ornua with milk, from eight different member co-ops.

These are Dairygold, Glanbia, Arrabawn, Aurivo, Lakeland Dairies, Carbery, North Cork Creameries and Tipperary Co-op.

“We are a co-op of co-ops,” Jordan said at the 30th annual EDF congress in Cork.

“We purchased, last year, €1.2bn worth of Irish dairy products.

“That’s a significant volume of 390,000t of Irish dairy products and it’s slowly growing year on year and outgrowing milk output,” he said.

Challenges

Milk output, Jordan said, has slowed down significantly.

“Demand is robust, supply is down, therefore prices have gone up,” he said.

He also said that, globally, Ornua is “under pressure” in relation to inflation, climate and supply chain issues.

“Four companies are consolidated to account for 80% of global shipping.

“Three companies account for 80% of container manufacturing in the world, two of those are based in China, so shipping and supply chain is a problem,” he said.