First Milk delivers healthy performance in year of progress

Farmer-owned co-operative, First Milk, has today published its Annual Financial and Impact Report for the year ending March 31, 2024, which shows strong growth in performance for its co-operative members.

Turnover and Operating Profit have increased, whilst the business has continued to drive capital investment and completed the strategic acquisition of BV Dairy during the year, broadening its customer base and product range.

Key highlights:

• Turnover grown to £476m (2023: £456m)
• Operating profit increased to £16.8m (2023: £5.1m)
• Capital investment across sites of £8.4m (2023: £7.4m)
• Total group capital and reserves increased to £58.5m (2023: £46.7m)

Strategic Investments

Investments focused primarily on adding strategic capability to First Milk, to provide new ways to maximise value and returns for our members. The acquisition of BV Dairy was completed in February 2024. BV Dairy is a successful manufacturer of specialist chilled dairy products based in Dorset. It services customers throughout Great Britain, offering a comprehensive end-to-end solution to customers across food manufacturing and food service, as well as co-manufacturing for exciting growth markets such as the home meal solutions and gut health sectors.

A new partnership was agreed with Yeo Valley, to create the Naturally Better Dairy Group, supplying a dedicated milk pool produced by regenerative dairy farmers in South-West England. Capital expenditure increased 13.5% to £8.4 million, delivering operational improvements and completing the project at our Lake District Creamery to produce specialist protein ingredients in partnership with Arla Food Ingredients.

Regenerative Farming

Our commitment to regenerative farming practices continues at scale making us one of the largest practitioners of regenerative farming in the UK. Currently 96% of our 700 members are implementing regenerative action plans on their farms, covering 98% of our member milk pool.

Their action plans focus on multiple interventions designed to deliver outcomes including improving soil health, enhancing biodiversity and sequestering carbon. The number of positive interventions on member farms increased to 261,340 from 163,834 the previous year across 84,623ha of land – up 59.5% year-on-year. On average, each parcel of land under the stewardship of these First Milk members will benefit from 11 regenerative interventions this year, up from seven the previous year.

Commenting on the report, Shelagh Hancock, Chief Executive, said:

“Despite the wider economic and geopolitical challenges, I’m pleased to say that First Milk has delivered healthy performance in the last year and I’m confident we are well placed for the future. Our focus remains on developing and creating value for our members, helping deliver resilience against the many challenges we face. This year has seen us broadening our capability with capital investment to access the specialist protein market, and the strategic acquisition of BV Dairy, extending our market reach into the food service sector and product mix, into fermented products and creams.

“In addition, our members have made great strides in the last 12 months scaling their regenerative farming practices with the support of our customers. I’m also encouraged to see regenerative farming becoming more widely understood and invested in across the UK food sector, with an increasing number of brands and retailers supporting its development. We remain confident that its tangible outcomes will help to solve the climate, nature and biodiversity crises and improve farm resilience and we are pleased to be leading in this area.

“Ultimately, our vision for the future is clear – we are working to enrich life every day to secure the future for our members, colleagues, customers and communities. We will do that by ensuring First Milk is a distinctive, regenerative farmer co-operative, efficiently producing great tasting, quality dairy products for our customers and consumers.”