UPDATE: UK: Müller Wiseman targets direct milk supply

German-owned dairy firm Müller Wiseman hopes to increase the proportion of milk sourced directly from UK farmers through a recruitment drive.

The UK unit of Theo Müller Group said today (27 February) that it intends to become the UK’s “largest and most successful” dairy. The company hopes to recruit more UK dairy farmers to supply its milk through an incentive scheme that will see it offer 1ppl on top of its farmgate milk price. It is also encouraging exiting members of the Müller Wiseman Milk Group to up milk production, offering a payment of 1ppl to dairy farmers that increase production by 2% year-on-year.

A spokesperson for the company told just-food that Müller Wiseman hopes this recruitment drive will allow it to purchase a higher proportion of its milk needs directly from UK dairy farmers.

“The driver for this initiative is that we want to increase the proportion of milk that we buy directly from dairy farmers. Right now we are only getting 65% of our requirement from farmers contracted to us. We’d like to increase this to over 90%. We’re signalling now that we want more dairy farmers to work directly with us,” the spokesperson commented.