Barry Nicholls, chief executive of Milk Link

摘要

As the UK dairy co-operative Milk Link begins to reward the investment of its dairy farmer owners, Barry Nicholls is optimistic about the future of British dairy farming. "Being in a position to start delivering tangible returns from added value processing to our farmer members marks a major new phase in the development of Milk Link", according to Nicholls. The 2,000-strong farmers' co-operative planned to deliver a return on the £40m (?58.9m) invested by its member farmers in 2007/08, but instead started delivering returns to them last year with the repayment of £5.7m in cash of the members' original investment. More recently the co-operative has announced that in June this year it will pay a processing interest payment of at least £2m to its members - the first such payment made by any dairy co-operative in the UK. "Our priority now is to improve returns for our members who have invested heavily in the business," Nicholls says. "They are now seeing a return for their investment, and the returns this year and last demonstrate that our business model is bearing fruit."