OMSCo Meets Supply Challenge

Archived

Monday, 02 October 2006

At the moment there's a major challenge facing OMSCo...more demand for British organic milk than our OMSCo farmers can supply. Following a phenomenal sales increase over the last year, with organic milk demand growing by 60%, the market has reached a level where we cannot meet current consumer demand.
OMSCo supplies a number of large retailers and organic dairy companies, who rely on us to supply enough organic milk for their requirements. In the short term, the only way we can do this is to temporarily import a small quantity of organic milk to supplement our home farmed supply. This is not expected to exceed 5% of the total we supply. The imported milk comes from EU countries that are subject to the same stringent organic standards as the UK. It costs more than the milk produced here, so it is not a cheap alternative, it’s just the only option to having a shortage of organic milk on shop shelves.
A number of farmers have joined OMSCo recently and are currently converting to organic farming, which will enable us to supply our customers in the future, but becoming fully organic takes time.
The milk being imported will be phased out as supplies of this additional British, OMSCo milk increase. We are totally committed to supplying fully British OMSCo milk to the market as quickly as possible.
The organic food industry is the fastest growing food sector with sales up 30% on last year, and worth a staggering £1.6 billion.