A first dairy ready to take over breeders let go by Lactalis – 10/11/2024 at 3:24 p.m.

The dairy company LSDH is ready to collect milk from around fifty farms on the verge of losing their contract with Lactalis, its manager announced to AFP on Friday.

“We estimate that we will be able to take over 50 farms,” declared the president of LSDH, Emmanuel Vasseneix.

The multinational Lactalis (President, Lactel, Galbani), which claims the title of the world’s leading dairy group, announced on September 25 that it would gradually reduce its volumes collected in France by almost 9%, with a view to paying better every ton of milk.

There are around 300 farms – often run by several associated operators – which will no longer be collected in the long term by Lactalis, in eastern France and around Vendée.

“A certain number of abandoned producers are very close to our production plant in Cholet” (Maine-et-Loire), explains Mr. Vasseneix.

However, this new factory, which packages liquid milk sold in supermarkets, is not operating at maximum capacity and “we have customers – Leclerc, Auchan, Lidl – who ask us for additional volumes” to sell them under their own brands, he explains.

He calculates that he can recover “between 50 and 60 million liters” of milk per year. Lactalis wants to reduce its collection by around 450 million liters in France.

With the main producer organization which supplies it with milk (APLBC), the company organized a meeting this week with Lactalis producers.

“There is a bit of conditionality; breeders must adhere to our philosophy”, notes the boss of LSDH, who is keen to specify that he is not trying to carry out a “comm operation”, to play the role of savior. , nor to “create a draft of air”.

GMO-free cow feed and access to pasture are part of the basis requested from applicants.

“This will not happen with a snap of the fingers,” adds Jérôme Chapon, president of the APLBC and breeder in the Manche region, to AFP.

“We won’t do anything,” continues the milk producer. “If we don’t have an outlet in front of us, we won’t take on more farms than we can absorb.”