Milcobel is scaling back activities
Danone is not the first dairy company to warn about the nitrogen policy. Milcobel, the largest Belgian dairy cooperative, also did this earlier this week when announcing its annual figures. This shows that Milcobel will have made a loss of 11.6 million euros in 2023. To make the cooperative more resilient again, it was announced that business units will be merged in the coming months and that the powder activities in Kallo will be partially scaled back, which will also result in the loss of 130 jobs.
In addition to the increased costs for energy, raw materials, services and wages, Milcobel also explicitly pointed to “the sharply increased regulations surrounding agriculture and livestock farming in Europe and Belgium” when announcing the annual figures, which has led to a shrinking milk pool. The cooperative also expects that milk supply will decrease in the coming months. “We must adapt our processing capacity to the declining milk pool and have chosen to reduce production with the least added value,” it said.
