First Milk’s sales team blamed for Bute’s Rothesay Creamery closure

Bute Councillor, Robert Macintyre, has spoken out on the shock news for the island that First Milk proposes to close Rothesay Creamery. He says: ‘The intention of First Milk to close Rothesay Creamery, with the consequent loss of 19 jobs, will have a devastating effect on the dairy industry and the local economy on the Island of Bute.

‘The proposed closure would bring to an end cheese-making on the Island which commenced in 1954.

‘The new Rothesay Creamery opened in May 1991. It has dedicated staff working in a modern facility which produces an excellent product which First Milk states it cannot market successfully.

‘At a time when fragile rural areas are being encouraged to market local food this decision is difficult to comprehend.

‘First Milk intends building a new creamery in Kintyre, yet at the same time announces it wishes to close a first rate facility on the Island of Bute. The logic is baffling.

‘It states that the Creamery is losing £500,000 per year. The cheese is first class, but the failure of First Milk’s Sales Team to sell Bute Cheese to the proper high value markets is the reason for this loss.

‘If Isle of Bute Cheese was sold into the niche markets as it should be, this loss would be transformed into a profit.   We should also remind ourselves this cheese has won gold awards at both the Royal Highland Show and the Nantwich Show, both recognised as the two main cheese shows in the UK’.

HIs final words are: ‘I would urge First Milk to reconsider this devastating decision’.

Councillor Macintyre rightly defends the product, identifies a sales failure and points to the social and economic impact on the small island population of the direct loss of 19 jobs – before the secondary impacts are calculated.

There is though, a gap in this picture. Bute farmers have been going out of dairy farming, First Milk’s case is the consequent under-use and under production at the plant, whose 1991 concept will have been based  on the assumption that the supply chain obtaining at that time would continue.

The farmers have been leaving dairy farming because every year, the major buyers, the giant supermarket chains ‘negotiate’ (meaning ‘take it or leave it’) ever lower farm gate prices for the milk they produce.

And while the Tescos and the rest of them are always looking to drive their profit margins even higher, this annual chiselling  implicates the rest of us too – looking for cheaper food.