North Cork Creameries today (Thursday, April 2) confirmed that it has reached agreement with Carbery on a new commercial milk supply agreement.

However it did not disclose any details of the deal with Carbery because of "commercial reasons".

According to the Kanturk headquartered co-op the new commercial agreement "will assist in providing certainty for North Cork Creameries’ milk suppliers by having a dedicated processing outlet for their milk".

"This mutually satisfactory arrangement will deliver value to farmer shareholders across both organisations," North Cork Creameries added.

The co-op also stated that it "is committed to paying a competitive milk price to milk suppliers, and the agreement with Carbery will support this objective".

North Cork Creameries

Confirmation of the new deal with Carbery comes after a turbulent few weeks for the co-op which has been in business since 1928.

It is undersood that at one stage staff at North Cork Creameries were informed that there was a possibility that their jobs at the plant in Kanturk could have been at risk.

This followed a decision by the plant to stop processing activity, after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suspended the dairy business' licence to discharge water from its wastewater treatment plant.

The EPA had issued a notice to North Cork Creameries on February 19 ordering the co-op to suspend effluent discharge.

That notice also set out the standard that co-op needed to achieve to allow the notice to be lifted.

As a result of this, Carbery Group began processing some of the milk supplied to North Cork Creameries and discussions had been underway to secure a more permanent arrangement on this front.

It is understood that these discussions had not initially progressed as planned.

However today North Cork Creameries confirmed that the deal with Carbery Group has been completed.

The Kanturk headquartered co-op today also confirmed that "positive progress is being made at the co-operative’s processing operations".

The co-op added: "The facility is continuing to meet customer needs. It is operating at a reduced capacity while improvements are being made to effluent treatment facilities.

"This is in order to achieve compliance with EPA requirements".

Last month North Cork Creameries announced the appointment of a new CEO.

Stephen Daly took over from Michael Cronin who had served as interim CEO in recent months.

Daly has worked in dairy operations and commercial roles at the co-op for the past 13 years.