Father Christmas may have made a few deliveries around the end of December but he’s not the only one. Our milk operations team gave him a run for his money in terms of last-minute deliveries and balancing customers’ requirements.
“The festive season is one of the busiest times of the year for us. Planning starts with our processing customers back in October as they attempt to predict buying habits over the festive season. While there are patterns from year to year, we have to remain flexible to our customers’ needs and be effective and efficient at moving milk around the country at relatively short notice,” explained Mark McQuade, Director of Milk Operations.
"In the run-up to Christmas, the key focus was on supplying raw milk to our liquid processing customers in preparation for consumers stocking up for the festive season. This switched immediately to providing raw milk to our manufacturing customers before the focus moved back to liquid milk for the New Year. Indeed traditionally, one of the biggest times of the year for liquid milk to be purchased is right after New Year so we needed to be close to our customers to ensure we met their needs.
“Clearly the success of this operation was ensuring that we had a close working relationship with our hauliers so that vehicles were in the right places at the right time in order to fufill our customers’ needs and we appreciated everyone’s flexibility,” said Mark.
"Additionally, we also received huge support from our own First Milk Cheese Company creameries as we endeavoured to balance the milk supplies.”
