The next move lies in the hands of the farmers.The ACCC will...

The next move lies in the hands of the farmers.The ACCC will never allow the dairy industry to rationalise in a way
that will be in farmers' best interests. But farmers can rationalise it any way they want. For the first time, they have the power and hopefully the motivation they understand what they can achieve. No
one can stop them from doing it. They can reverse engineer the whole
processing sector.

The domestic industry cannot bring any growth. It's too small and
virtually stagnant. Anybody playing in that segment of the market
cannot drive growth or profitability. Both Parmalat and Kirin are not
interested in growth into the future. They just want to dominate the
domestic market and keep as much profit as they can.

Our processing industry lacks scale to truly compete with the big league. Too high a cost structure, etc, etc, etc. No capability due to size to invest in new product, do R&D into new innovative products, let alone market that product and the brands to the rest of the world. We are merely picking up the crumbs if we do not do something about it.

Build a mega co-op and the focus changes back to profitable farmers then grow the industry. We must learn from NZ's mistakes. Their business model can be improved. Move dairy to the most suitable areas, then dominate.

This is all big picture but it's there and doable.

Farmers are the key to this. The companies are merely the building
blocks for this new structure. Farmers can now have total control of how the blocks are to be rearranged. And the key to all this is the oversupply of stainless steel that is sitting idle and making us uncompetitive and costing farmers money. Farmers now realise how powerful their milk is. They don't need to tip it down the drain, just move it. (People will sit up and take notice. Actions speak louder than words) The new co-op should have a new name with no history to get in the way.The Australian dairy industry can be bigger than NZ. We have more diverse growing regions and greater access to supplements. Australia can be a true power house in world agriculture
but only farmers have it in their hands to do it. It has to come from the bottom up or you can kiss it all goodbye. For farmers it,s not all about the share price