European Dairy Cooperative Top-20 logo

Netherlands and Norwegian researchers have produced the first ever top-20 ranking of European dairy cooperatives. The comparative study covering strategy, capitalization and economic performance, is based on a new approach to measuring performance - separating milk content from dairy product value, thus enabling the study to distinguish returns to milk (on-farm investment) from returns to capital (cooperative investment).

"If members don't benefit from cooperative investments, cooperatives will lag behind in terms of value adding capacity". Senior Researcher, ir. Onno-Frank van Bekkum

"The application of conventional financial performance ratios to cooperatives rejects the fact that the cooperative mission is not to accumulate profits at company level (other than securing the continuity and growth of the company). Therefore it doesn't make sense to compare cooperatives on this basis."

ir. Onno-Frank van Bekkum

Unless their cooperatives are strong enough to keep milk prices up, dairy farmers will be hit hard by EU dairy intervention. The investment relationship between member and cooperative, needs to evolve towards a new stage of maturation.

"If members don't benefit from cooperative investments, cooperatives will lag behind in terms of value adding capacity". Eventually these cooperatives will lose ground in the market place. Or end up in the bottom end of the market, which, given the trend of market liberalization, is not an attractive prospect for dairy farmers in the vast majority of European countries."

European Diary Cooperative Top-20
Project deadline: 31 December 2004. Final report is due early 2005