Protesting farmers from the group Farmers for Action (FFA) brought a Muller depot in Shropshire to a standstill on Sunday night, arguing that rises in milk prices have not been passed on to producers.

The protest, at the Muller plant in Market Drayton, which caused ripples in the sector and elicited a  cool response from the Bavaria-based dairy giant, was planned to highlight the “market failure” which FFA says requires intervention from the government, and the need for farmers to receive a “Fair share of the recent uplift in milk prices” after two years of dwindling returns.

In late July, Farmers For Action chair David Handley said, “Processors and retailers are holding back from allowing fairer returns to dairy farmers and that is unacceptable. unless we see urgent change we will have no option but to take our protests to the doors of those retailers and processors who are most to blame.”

Farmers from Wales, the Midlands and the North-West of England arrived at the distribution centre at 8pm on Sunday and blockaded the facility for the rest of the night, preventing delivery lorries from entering or leaving the site. The Muller facility was chosen as the processor elected to hold milk prices for September, rather than giving its suppliers an increase in light of the improved outlook for dairy.

A muller spokesperson said, “Disrupting a business with  a track record for offering a competitive milk price to farmers and investing in the UK dairy industry makes no sense whatsoever.
 
“The organisers of this disruption are not suppliers and should not claim to represent  the 1,900 farmers who do supply us. We will take whatever measures we can to protect our business.”

Fewer than 100 farmers are thought to have taken part in the protest. FFA threatened to return to  a Muller site unless the company increases its non-aligned liquid milk payments from 18 pence per litre.

The Tenant Farmers Association (TFA) backed FFA’s calls for milk processors to pass on the difference of increased returns to their suppliers in a joint statement in July, with the group’s national chair Stephen Wyrill commenting, “Retailers and processors in are using their dominant positions in the supply chain to protect their returns and profitability without ensuring a fair return to primary producers. These issues need a long-term solution which is why TFA has been calling for reforms of the remit of the Groceris Code Adjudicator… to be able to consider the impact of relationships all the way trough the retail supply chains rather than just direct contracts between processors and retailers.”