Here at On The Wight, we weren’t the only ones confused by a County Press story that opened “Milk producers have formed a co-operative to try to keep the Isle of Wight’s ailing dairy industry alive.”
As On The Wight is a founding-partner of the new ‘I Love Isle of Wight Milk‘ campaign, we couldn’t understand how we’d missed such important news. It turned out we hadn’t.
We got in touch with those spearheading the campaign only to find that the County Press had firmly got hold of the wrong end of the stick, creating a misleading story in the process. (Update: The CP dispute this, see below) No wonder there was so much confusion.
Legal structure currently not fixed
Here’s the latest. The discussions between dairy farmers are still ongoing, with no final decision having been made as to the legal structure they will adopt.
They are currently exploring the options, but one thing was made very clear to us – it won’t be a co-operative.
A meeting with all of the participating dairy farmers is due to take place soon and we’ll bring you the news as soon as it’s available.
Good progress with supermarkets
It was good to hear from organisers that discussions with the Island’s supermarkets to stock Island milk are going very well – and all of you who have taken the vouchers to those supermarkets can take pride in helping make it happen.
Nearly all of them are making very positive noises. We hear that so far only two – Lidl and Marks & Spencer – have indicated that they won’t become involved.
Expect more Island dairy products
One of the benefits of a successful campaign will be that Island-produced milk not need to travel off the Island to be processed, ready for sale.
If more processing of Island-produced milk is carried out on the Island, there are additional benefits. With the cream being removed from the milk locally, that can be used to create other dairy products on the Island, such as butter, cream and ice cream.
CP stands by their story
Update 16:57 27.Sep.12: Alan Marriott, Editor of the County Press, called up this afternoon insisting that a co-operative was going to be formed and that the reporter’s notes show this. Obviously this isn’t what we were told yesterday.
Alan wrote to us, “No member of the committee has approached us to suggest anything in the story was wrong”. This is contrary to what we were told was going to happen yesterday. We hope to find out more tomorrow.
