Farming News - First Milk Reports Strong Results
News
First Milk Reports Strong Results
The last financial year saw First Milk deliver competitive returns to its members and make tangible progress on its regenerative farming agenda.
Farmer-owned co-operative, First Milk, has today published its Annual Financial and Impact Report for the year ending March 31, 2025, which shows a solid financial performance, benefiting from its acquisition of BV Dairy in February 2024 and strong customer relationships in its core business, enabling it to deliver competitive returns to its members.
Turnover increased 20% year-on-year to £570 million due to the full year effect of BV Dairy and higher sales volumes of milk, whey protein products and specialist chilled products to customers that are successfully meeting the growth in consumer demand for high quality protein rich and gut health dairy products.
Key financial highlights:
- Turnover grown to £570 million (2024: £476 million)
- Operating profit increased to £20.5 million (2024: £16.8 million)
- Total group capital and reserves £62.5 million (2024: £58.5 million)
First Milk's financial performance enabled it to maintain net debt at £66 million, only fractionally above the previous year's net debt of £64.9 million, whilst paying the outstanding loan notes relating to the acquisition of BV Dairy. In addition, it made £4.7 million of strategic investments, with the majority, £3.9 million, going into major CAPEX projects at its two cheese producing creameries in the Lake District and Pembrokeshire.
Integration of BV Dairy into the First Milk family is being delivered at pace, with the co-operative implementing a successful restructure, creating three separate business units (BV Business Unit, Cheese Business Unit, Milk Business Unit) that are designed and resourced to be more responsive to customer and market needs and maximise opportunities for customers, being created by its farmer members through their Regenerative Farm Plans.
Regenerative Action
First Milk made further progress in the year in developing and scaling its regenerative farming practices, with an increase in land entering its regenerative programme to 89,977 hectares from 84,623 hectares the previous year. First Milk's Regenerative Farm Plans are focused on delivering improvements in soil health, nature recovery, water protection and carbon sequestration, with farmers collecting and recording data field-by-field across a range of actions and interventions designed to improve positive outcomes in each of the four areas.
Key regenerative highlights:
- Increase in land entering its regenerative programme of 6% to 89,977 Ha (2024: 84,623 Ha)
- Reduction in the intensity ratio of CO2e per kilogram of fat and protein corrected milk (FPCM) on like-for-like volumes supplied by its members of 3.2% to 1.13 kgCO2e/kg FPCM (2024: 1.17 kgCO2e/kg FPCM)
- Increase in tonnes of CO2e sequestered into the soil on farm by First Milk members of 78% to 203,000 tonnes CO2e (2024: 114,000 tonnes CO2e)
Net emissions across the co-operative's full GHG reporting scope (Scope 1, 2 and 3) increased in the year by 166,416 tonnes (14%), predominantly resulting from the full year footprint of BV Dairy and growth in production volumes of energy intensive whey products. In the second half of the year, First Milk completed its transition to 100% of purchased electricity from renewable sources and recorded zero waste sent to landfill from its three manufacturing sites.
Commenting on the report, Shelagh Hancock, Chief Executive, said:
"In a year of subdued economic growth in the UK and across export markets, our solid business performance enabled us to achieve our objective of delivering above market total returns to our members. Importantly we achieved this whilst integrating BV Dairy into the First Milk family and paying down the outstanding loan notes related to the acquisition.
"Add to this the benefits that our restructure is bringing to our customers, to better support them on their commercial and ESG agendas, it's a year when we made important progress on adding value to our customers and members and building our resilience.
"The leadership our members are showing in implementing their Regenerative Farm Plans, is also building greater resilience in their farm businesses, driven primarily by improving soil health, restoring nature and protecting ground water and watercourses, alongside increasing the carbon content of their soil through sequestration.
"Ultimately our vision is to enrich life every day to secure the future for our members, colleagues, customers and communities. We will do this by ensuring First Milk is a distinctive, regenerative farmer owned co-operative, efficiently producing great tasting, quality dairy products for our customers and consumers."