Milk-- Liquid Gold??

Sam Kade

Water John wrote: »

O'Bumble, what qualification have you to make that generalised diagnosis?

She's brain washed from YouTube videos.

ted1

In relation to your orginal question. We get milk Delivered every second day via the mymilkman.ie app it works well and as we are in a housing estate it makes it worth the milkmans while. You'd need to target clusters of houses, estates etc to make it worth your while . The most you could charge per litre delivered would be about 1.75 euro.
You are delivering a low volume low cost product so you need population density as diesel and time costs money.

If you are in rural Ireland but near a tourist town like Killarney you could target hotels with speciality milk you'll get higher volume but at a lower price

pedroeibar1

Icelandicseige wrote: »

I understand your concerns but If things got so good that I would have to increase my herd I seriously doubt I would have a problem Financing it... You are talking on a Big Big scale I don't want anything to do with such an operation.! I'm talking on a small scale and increase slow and steady over several years. Just for your information,
Average Milk yield from a Cow/year 5000 litres
5000 x 50 Cows = 250,000 litres year
250,000 x €2 = 500,000
I realise there will be Costs in refrigeration and a plant. We will see. I'm looking for advise here. I didn't post to be told I'm way in over my head. I'm looking at a option here. No Money has been invested!

I know a guy in West Cork does it and charges €3 a litre. Don't know how well it sells for him though. I must try get in contact with him.

You’re actually getting good advice but you do not want to hear it. The figures you produced are totally irrelevant without referencing the input costs.

You are suggesting a milk round - so housing density, so housing estates. People in housing estates generally have large mortgages, children and right now are, and have been, feeling considerable financial pressure. The notion that they are going to pay you €2 euro plus for a litre of milk when it can be bought for €1.29 in the local shop is simply pie-in-the-sky.

I also wonder about your skills, buying in hay instead of silage, when anyone with a half notion of farming would be aware that cows consuming silage produce significantly more milk than cows consuming hay.

Let’s ignore all those nasty questions (and other relevant ones like the age of the herd) and for the sake of simplicity, even out production volumes and agree that your 50 cows produce 700 litres a day from a morning and evening milking. You then have to pasteurize, bottle, label and distribute it. If a customer buys on average 2 litres a day, you need 350 customers. If it takes 5 minutes per customer (that includes driving time, walking time, collecting cash, etc.) the total time taken is +/- 30 hours. Add to that the four hours taken to bring in the cattle, clean, sterilize, etc. (I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt on a decent multi-bay milking set-up, which I doubt you have.) So with 34 hours and an eight hour day you will need 4 staff with vans plus yourself on the farm.

No point making a smart response that you are going to start small and work up – the capital cost of upgrading the sheds you have and building a new one to install a pasteurizing plant and bottling line, along with the costs of insurance, certification, QC, etc., make a scaled-down version of your project totally unviable from an economic perspective.

As for borrowing to finance such a project, I’m not the first to tell you that no lender would touch you with a bargepole. What counts is proven repayment ability, i.e. cashflow, and a viable business model.

Icelandicseige

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

You’re actually getting good advice but you do not want to hear it. The figures you produced are totally irrelevant without referencing the input costs.

You are suggesting a milk round - so housing density, so housing estates. People in housing estates generally have large mortgages, children and right now are, and have been, feeling considerable financial pressure. The notion that they are going to pay you €2 euro plus for a litre of milk when it can be bought for €1.29 in the local shop is simply pie-in-the-sky.

I also wonder about your skills, buying in hay instead of silage, when anyone with a half notion of farming would be aware that cows consuming silage produce significantly more milk than cows consuming hay.

Let’s ignore all those nasty questions (and other relevant ones like the age of the herd) and for the sake of simplicity, even out production volumes and agree that your 50 cows produce 700 litres a day from a morning and evening milking. You then have to pasteurize, bottle, label and distribute it. If a customer buys on average 2 litres a day, you need 350 customers. If it takes 5 minutes per customer (that includes driving time, walking time, collecting cash, etc.) the total time taken is +/- 30 hours. Add to that the four hours taken to bring in the cattle, clean, sterilize, etc. (I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt on a decent multi-bay milking set-up, which I doubt you have.) So with 34 hours and an eight hour day you will need 4 staff with vans plus yourself on the farm.

No point making a smart response that you are going to start small and work up – the capital cost of upgrading the sheds you have and building a new one to install a pasteurizing plant and bottling line, along with the costs of insurance, certification, QC, etc., make a scaled-down version of your project totally unviable from an economic perspective.

As for borrowing to finance such a project, I’m not the first to tell you that no lender would touch you with a bargepole. What counts is proven repayment ability, i.e. cashflow, and a viable business model.

What are you on.?
When have I mentioned anything about picking hay over Silage?
And the Age of the Herd?
You are away with the fairys and making up total nonsense.

So you doubt I have farming knowledge?and
You doubt that our parlour is up to scratch.?

Who the **** are you to make them assumptions?
Are you one of those people who looks their nose down on everyone else? Because it sure sounds like it...

I totally respect that you think it's a bad idea but why be an Ahole about it?
The only eligible thing you said there was about the time needed to Milk Cows, Run the Farm and Pasterise and bottle the milk and Deliver Door to door and AGAIN I WILL SAY I HAVE NOT INVESTED IN ANYTHING THIS IS AN IDEA THAT IM LOOKING FOR OPINIONS ON.
And maybe getting Credit might be difficult but again this is only an idea.

So why go through my past posts bringing them up and make stupid comments like Hay vs Silage that I have never said! The amount of time to do all that will take way longer than 34 Hours!! It'll be hard work that's why it's myself and my father and were not afraid of Work.
If your going to reply back Dont Make up **** that I have never said to try and improve your argument. Anyway this is getting me nowhere. I'm going to go top up my farming Knowledge!

tacofries

If your milk is very high in protein then maybe looking at companies that sell preprepared, high protein meals might be of interest. One example of the a company which matches the above is cleancutmeals.ie. I don't know how nutritious your milk is so you would want to make sure yourself that it fits into the healthy diet side of things!

Their target market would match yours thereby quickly introducing you to a lot of potential customers. They already have the distribution side of things covered and their products shelf life would be similar to yours. At the same time, like other posters have said, it would be easier to scale production to meet the needs of these companies in comparison to the likes of Musgraves.

Icelandicseige

tacofries wrote: »

If your milk is very high in protein then maybe looking at companies that sell preprepared, high protein meals might be of interest. One example of the a company which matches the above is cleancutmeals.ie. I don't know how nutritious your milk is so you would want to make sure yourself that it fits into the healthough diet side of things!

Their target market would match yours thereby quickly introducing you to a lot of potential customers. They already have the distribution side of things covered and their products shelf life would be similar to yours. At the same time, like other posters have said, it would be easier to scale production to meet the needs of these companies in comparison to the likes of Musgrave.

Thanks for your positive input. Very Good idea. Unfortunately they are at the other side of the country.

Water John

Any one wanting to establish a niche premium product is not looking at the Multiples. They would be the total opposite.
Putting a niche premium product into a restaurant would not be for margin but a mutual beneficial attachment. A bit of PR for both sides.

pedroeibar1

Icelandicseige wrote: »

The amount of time to do all that will take way longer than 34 Hours!! ...... Anyway this is getting me nowhere. I'm going to go top up my farming Knowledge!

I read your earlier posts. Good idea to top up your knowledge, I do it all the time - it's called CPD. Maybe you should look at a clock also. If it is going to take 'way longer than 34 hours' in a day, and you and Dad = two, neither of you will have much time in bed, and no hope of being home at six ( I do look at you previous posts, as I said ) Vaccinate everything, indeed.

_Brian

Well I don't think people should knock or mock op for having ideas or bouncing a few ideas around to see what people think.

From some of the responses I can see how this country turned into a bunch of lemmings following each other into Tesco et al to buy over processed rubbish farmed in another country.

We need more farmers with ideas to produce local niche products rather that insisting every business needs to be thinking of immediate expansion to Kerrygold proportions.

Icelandicseige

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

I read your earlier posts. Good idea to top up your knowledge, I do it all the time - it's called CPD. Maybe you should look at a clock also. If it is going to take 'way longer than 34 hours' in a day, and you and Dad = two, neither of you will have much time in bed, and no hope of being home at six ( I do look at you previous posts, as I said ) Vaccinate everything, indeed.

Yes pick out something from my post to mock when you know I meant in a week.!
Your not contributing to the thread so how about going away?

pedroeibar1

_Brian wrote: »

Well I don't think people should knock or mock op for having ideas or bouncing a few ideas around to see what people think.

From some of the responses I can see how this country turned into a bunch of lemmings following each other into Tesco et al to buy over processed rubbish farmed in another country.

We need more farmers with ideas to produce local niche products rather that insisting every business needs to be thinking of immediate expansion to Kerrygold proportions.

I agree with you. I provided seed capital for two of the country's first artisan (that term was not used then) cheesemakers a few decades ago. Happily both are still around, and nationally recognized business names. I also worked with a farm community to develop a non-farming business that made them moderately successful. I have no issues with people bouncing ideas around, but anyone being rude to me gets a smack, and any daft idea deserves to be called as such. The OP has provided little concrete info, and to dismiss a comment/question on the age of his herd shows a lack of knowledge of the dairy industry. Anyone with any business accumen exited dairying unless they had the scope to milk 200+ cows. The OP is a waste of time with attitude.

Icelandicseige

_Brian wrote: »

Well I don't think people should knock or mock op for having ideas or bouncing a few ideas around to see what people think.

From some of the responses I can see how this country turned into a bunch of lemmings following each other into Tesco et al to buy over processed rubbish farmed in another country.

We need more farmers with ideas to produce local niche products rather that insisting every business needs to be thinking of immediate expansion to Kerrygold proportions.

A poster mentioned Food Acedemy here a few posts back Brian. Look it up there is some fantastic products being made and going onto Supervalu Selves. There is also ones that don't last to long though. It's all well and good stocking the shelves in a few shops but if they don't sell the managers of said shops won't be long about replacing your product for another!
A few Posters mentioned Scale Scale Scale.! They must have some serious products that they can't keep on the shelves and shops to match them!

Icelandicseige

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

I agree with you. I provided seed capital for two of the country's first artisan (that term was not used then) cheesemakers a few decades ago. Happily both are still around, and nationally recognized business names. I also worked with a farm community to develop a non-farming business that made them moderately successful. I have no issues with people bouncing ideas around, but anyone being rude to me gets a smack, and any daft idea deserves to be called as such. The OP has provided little concrete info, and to dismiss a comment/question on the age of his herd shows a lack of knowledge of the dairy industry. Anyone with any business accumen exited dairying unless they had the scope to milk 200+ cows. The OP is a waste of time with attitude.

You honestly can't leave something down can you?
The age of a dairy herd is a ridiculous question every Herd of Cows in the country has all ages in it.. Anyone with farming Knowledge would know that.And I have worked on some of the biggest Dairy operations in Ireland so don't tell me I have no experience.. So I'm a waster now as well on top of everything else!?
By the sound of you you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth and if we met in public there wouldn't be two words out of you..So if I say please this time will you go away and stop mentioning me?

duploelabs

Water John wrote: »

Any one wanting to establish a niche premium product is not looking at the Multiples. They would be the total opposite.
Putting a niche premium product into a restaurant would not be for margin but a mutual beneficial attachment. A bit of PR for both sides.

Of all the cr@p written on this thread, this takes the (artisan hand-crafted gluten free) biscuit

dudara

duploelabs wrote: »

Of all the cr@p written on this thread, this takes the (artisan hand-crafted gluten free) biscuit

Actually, it's not an idea without merit. If an artisan producer can get their product into a high-end restaurant, it can do wonders in terms of PR and open up other high-end restaurants as customers.

I recently met the couple who run Ballyhoura mushrooms, and this is a significant part of their business.

duploelabs

dudara wrote: »

Actually, it's not an idea without merit. If an artisan producer can get their product into a high-end restaurant, it can do wonders in terms of PR and open up other high-end restaurants as customers.

I recently met the couple who run Ballyhoura mushrooms, and this is a significant part of their business.

I was referring to multiples being the antithesis of a high-end niche product.
However to address your point, foodtrade will take a 66-70% of the sale margin before tax, if Op hopes to get the €500kPA as they're hoping they'd better have a significant market catchment to be able to offload their production at the figures they've quoted as well as being able to distribute their stock and the restaurant being able to use it in three days considering their product isn't pasteurised. Using a third party distributors with refrigerated vans would take another 15-17% on top of the 66-70%

pedroeibar1

Icelandicseige wrote: »

The age of a dairy herd is a ridiculous question every Herd of Cows in the country has all ages in it.. Anyone with farming Knowledge would know that.........
By the sound of you you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth and if we met in public there wouldn't be two words out of you......

It is obvious that a herd of cows will be made up of all ages. The reason I asked that (a basic and valid dairying question) is that the age cohorts of the cows in a herd determine its productivity, how it should be managed and how much capital would be required to build a bigger herd (i.e. the replacement rate benchmark). How many first-calf heifers, or second-calf heifers, etc. , [Info.for non-farmers - cows grow for seven years before they start to decrease in weight. Proper herd management i.e. that which governs profit/loss takes this into account. They need to be sorted so that the nutritional needs of each cohort are met, and that each is not treated based on the average age of the herd.]

Why are you so dismissive and rude? Why not revert with some proper figures? Like the input costs associated with a herd you are supposed to take on? The posters here generally are not farmers, they give advice based on facts and figures, not on notions. Your input costs are critical and until you know them you can only dream. Bye now.:rolleyes:

mrawkward

Like most on here I suspect, I am not from a farming background but I am aware that our national agri advisory service Teagsc is held in huge regard globally. As a well educated progressive young farmer you must be in regular contact with them, it might help take things in a more positive direction on the wider commercial aspects if you were to share their advice/take on your plans.

duploelabs

mrawkward wrote: »

Like most on here I suspect, I am not from a farming background but I am aware that our national agri advisory service Teagsc is held in huge regard globally. As a well educated progressive young farmer you must be in regular contact with them, it might help take things in a more positive direction on the wider commercial aspects if you were to share their advice/take on your plans.

Teagsc deal with the scientific elements of the agrifood industry, not the commercial. Bord bia would handle the marketing

mrawkward

duploelabs wrote: »

Teagsc deal with the scientific elements of the agrifood industry, not the commercial. Bord bia would handle the marketing

I was tallking about the economic/investment/farm resources/production areas of farming.

The have a huge range of services in farm management/development etc see https://www.teagasc.ie/about/farm-advisory/

pedroeibar1

duploelabs wrote: »

Teagsc deal with the scientific elements of the agrifood industry, not the commercial. Bord bia would handle the marketing

Yes,(sort of) but the OP is nowhere near getting any input from Bord Bia. Teagasc have some farm advisory services that would be very suitable for the OP (e.g. their benchmarking systems for dairyherd and grassland monitoring) and it is highly likely that the first thing a Bord Bia rep would look at is the OP’s farm performance measured against national averages on the Teagasc ‘table’. Before investing time/effort in any idea BB would want to see that the farm measured up to (and possibly surpassed) national standards.

PS on the “multiples being the antithesis of a high-end niche product” comment, I’m not fully in agreement - yes to those in Ireland, but there are several Continental multiples that buy top-end product from Ireland – e.g. Carrefour Market ‘Gourmet’ and also Gourmet Lafayette both carry Irish lines. (for another thread). Carrefour continue to roll-out their Gourmet lines and are concentrating on the 'Market' size stores rather than the hypermarche end of the sector, so it is a growth area.

Icelandicseige

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

It is obvious that a herd of cows will be made up of all ages. The reason I asked that (a basic and valid dairying question) is that the age cohorts of the cows in a herd determine its productivity, how it should be managed and how much capital would be required to build a bigger herd (i.e. the replacement rate benchmark). How many first-calf heifers, or second-calf heifers, etc. , [Info.for non-farmers - cows grow for seven years before they start to decrease in weight. Proper herd management i.e. that which governs profit/loss takes this into account. They need to be sorted so that the nutritional needs of each cohort are met, and that each is not treated based on the average age of the herd.]

Why are you so dismissive and rude? Why not revert with some proper figures? Like the input costs associated with a herd you are supposed to take on? The posters here generally are not farmers, they give advice based on facts and figures, not on notions. Your input costs are critical and until you know them you can only dream. Bye now.:rolleyes:

Ah here, you obviously have never worked on a farm in your life. All of what you said is a given. Farmers don't even have to think about that. Cows are Culled for many reasons and young stock are either reared on farm or contract reared by another farmer or bought in. It's 1 part of 1000 of Running a Farm. That you obviously have no clue about!! But like to think you do...
You silly silly boy I have told you numerous times I don't have figures THIS IS AT THE IDEA/Feedback stage.
Does it make you feel important talking figures or Something?! Go lie down if I want your opinion on figures I'll start a thread on that too.... I'm not dismissive, maybe rude to you (You deserve it) but I haven't dismissed anything you have said. You might think next time before calling posters names when they are just looking for advise and feedback...You have talked nonsense once again.! Your good at that! I'll give you that!

mrawkward

Post #1 you come on here with an idea to deliver your own milk door to door, at it appears, €2/litre. Since then you have assiduously ignored all queries as to how this would work from a production or business perspective.
Validation of a business idea is done by making the minimum number of assumptions and including the actual quantifiable costs. The foregoing requires some plodding work to find out the actual cost numbers etc. It will soon be pretty evident as to whether the idea has commercial merit or not. My suspicion is that this one fails even the most basic “back of the envelope” financial model.

Water John

The original Multiples being mentioned here were the main supermarkets.
Keep away, simple as. The niche Multiples eg Carrefour, totally different kettle of fish. (When were fish sold in a kettle BTW).

Slighly off topic. Margins are funny. The highest margins are in the fast food industry.
You buy your battered onion rings portion for €2.20. One large onion makes five portions.


The OP and family have 50 jersey cows. Upping the scale to 200 cows is not a solution to their need for higher income.

He is looking to sell the litre of milk, in some form that increases the price he can charge the consumer.

One route, and I could be wrong, are Jerseys mostly A2 milk? This sells for about double the price in Australia.

pedroeibar1

Water John wrote: »

The original Multiples being mentioned here were the main supermarkets.
Keep away, simple as. The niche Multiples eg Carrefour, totally different kettle of fish. (When were fish sold in a kettle BTW).

Slighly off topic. Margins are funny. The highest margins are in the fast food industry.
You buy your battered onion rings portion for €2.20. One large onion makes five portions.
The OP and family have 50 jersey cows. Upping the scale to 200 cows is not a solution to their need for higher income.

He is looking to sell the litre of milk, in some form that increases the price he can charge the consumer.

One route, and I could be wrong, are Jerseys mostly A2 milk? This sells for about double the price in Australia.

It's what they are cooked in - a fish kettle is a long usually copper pot that fits an entire fish e.g. salmon. In private use they are gone the way of 'Salmon in aspic' and the dodo.
The OP is in rural Ireland, away from high density housing, so he ignored my earlier post on the number of customers needed (and the time necessary to service them) for his existing production.
Jersey milk has always sold at a premium, even back in the day, when it came in bottles differentiated by different coloured caps. It has a much higher fat content, so give better yields (20-30%) for both butter and cheese. Nowadays no hope of getting double the price, low-fat is the agenda today. No hope of small-scale milk operation due mainly to the short shelf life of the product, unlike cheese.
The thread iwas daft due to the total absence of numbers from the OP, his observations have not helped much either.

StupidLikeAFox

Icelandicseige wrote: »

THIS IS AT THE IDEA/Feedback stage.

Your original question was looking for opinions on "getting Customers" - people here have pointed out a number of important factors you need to consider before "getting customers" is even a consideration.

Your idea is basically as follows:

• We have these cows
• These cows can produce 250k litres of milk
• If we sell every one of those litres for €2 we will make €500k revenue
• We want to deliver them in glass bottles

This seems to be the extent of research you have done. Theres nothing much there for people here to discuss unless you can at least give pointers. I'm not sure what you are really looking out of this thread tbh.

duploelabs

As loath as I am to admit this, but I'm actually agreeing with Pedro. Furthering my ire to OP

VincePP

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

The notion that they are going to pay you €2 euro plus for a litre of milk when it can be bought for €1.29 in the local shop is simply pie-in-the-sky.

I would have no issue whatsoever in paying over €2 a litre for real milk. Thankfully I have a farmer at the end of the lane who does milk production in a small way and will drop a couple of bottle in every few days in return for use of a pasture we have but never use. Sometimes he gives me "strawberry milk" straight from the udder, wouldn't be my first choice though.

But when you drink real milk - you'll probably never go back to the mass produced tasteless stuff from supermarkets.

His main sales point is a cheese maker - its very much a retiremnt hobby for him as he did well out of selling parts of his original farm for houses a good few years ago.

For the OP - its difficult to get anwsers here and most posters just do not understand what you have. I also remember milking jersey cows in airfield when I was a young kid and was fascinated by it - again, you could buy milk from the overend sisters back then. (I'm a city boy).

Bets to talk to some local specialist food stores, check out any local market and talk to people, check out local cheese makers and see if there's a milk delivery service in your catchment area.

I doubt if you'll be able to sell direct to consumers yourself (concentrate on where you have the knowledge), but bypassing the producers and direct to smaller retail store and via a local milk delivery service would be possible.

You won't get rich - but it may keep the farm ticking over.

VincePP

dudara wrote: »

A lot of people don't want higher fat milk, .

That's all starting to change.

They realise fat is good for you. Dairy fat in particular! - The new treend of to ditch the low fat spread and enjoy real butter.

Remember when milk had the 2 inch head of cream - there was a fight to get to the bottle first in most households and pour a galss without shaking the bottle.

Creamy and delicious.

pedroeibar1

duploelabs wrote: »

As loath as I am to admit this, but I'm actually agreeing with Pedro. Furthering my ire to OP

:eek::eek: Shock. Horror ……..unless of course you refer only to the bit on the fish kettle ?
Thank you.