Dairy giant Carbery sees operating profits jump 20% to €24.8m

Turnover at food giant Carbery has jumped 8% to €668m, with significant growth driven by the group’s international taste and flavours divisions helping push operating profits up 20% to €24.8m.

The cheese, dairy, flavours, nutrition, and ingredients group has its main production facility in Ballineen in West Cork and food and flavours businesses across the UK, US, Italy, Brazil, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. Carbery published its 2024 results on Wednesday morning, with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation (EBITDA) up 12%, from €46.4m to €52m.

Net profits were up 25% to €14.1m net debt decreased to €39.5m from €60.4m in 2023.

“Performance this year was strong across all three of our business divisions, with significant growth driven by the very strong performance of our taste division in several markets,” chief executive Jason Hawkins said.

Mr Hawkins noted that the company allocated €8.6m to its stability fund to support its farmer shareholders “into the future, and through potentially difficult periods like weather, or challenged dairy markets”. Carbery is 86% owned by four West Cork Co-Ops - Barryroe, Drinagh, Bandon, and Lisavaird - with the remaining shares owned by individual farmers. Carbery has almost 1,200 farmer suppliers and employs 350 people at its production site in Ballineen.

While dairy dominates Carbery’s Irish concerns, it has diversified its global business, employing 650 outside Ireland at 11 international sites. “On the nutrition side of our business, we had good performance across our target segments of sports, infant, and clinical nutrition, with new business wins around the world and our ongoing focus on delivering innovation in this area. Our taste division continued to perform strongly in all regions, with our teams capitalising on increased consumer demand and delivering record performance in some markets,” added Mr Hawkins.

Carbery processed 574m litres of milk on its Ballineen site into cheese, nutrition ingredients, and bioethanol in 2024. Poor weather and heavy rainfall early in 2024 saw milk supply slump before a milder autumn helped ensure overall milk levels were only 2% behind 2023 levels.

Global dairy market prices which were subdued in the first half of 2024 rose later in the year. Carbery paid its farmer suppliers an extra payment of 5cpl for milk supplied in March 2024 to offset additional costs the poor weather brought.

Around 93% of milk supplied to Carbery qualifies for the company’s FutureProof sustainability bonus to support suppliers to improve on-farm sustainability. Carbery paid out €4.7m through this programme in 2024 and in 2025 is increasing the bonus by 1.25c per litre, with new soil fertility and animal welfare obligations on farmers. Carbery has a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2030.

Carbery said that over two years across its FutureProof herds, use of protected urea and improved breeding through the Economic Breeding Index (EBI) have saved 5,501 metric tons of CO2 - the equivalent to taking 174 cars off the road annually.