The Camperdown Dairy company will only be moderately affected by the collapse this week of fresh food delivery company Aussie Farmers Direct (AFD), the company’s chief executive says.
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Camperdown Dairy chief executive Peter Skene said the dairy products it sold to AFD had declined from 90 per cent of Camperdown Dairy’s business three years ago to only about five per cent shortly before AFD’s collpase.
Mr Skene said he expected Camperdown Dairy was owed less than $100,000 by AFD shortly before it went into administration.
AFD had a strong link to Camperdown, having established a dairy there in 2009-2010 in the former Bonlac dairy factory in the town’s main street..
In 2015, AFD sold the dairy to the publicly-listed Australian Dairy Farms Group.
The dairy had been renamed Camperdown Dairy more than a year before AFD sold it to the Australian Dairy Farms Group and had already expanded its customer base beyond AFD.
The Australian Dairy Farms Group owns six dairy farms in the south-west, several of which are located at Brucknell with another at Hexham.
The farms supply milk to Camperdown Dairy but the factory also processes milk from other suppliers for products outside the Camperdown Dairy product range,
Mr Skene said Camperdown Dairy was very disappointed about AFD’s collapse, and felt for the AFD franchisees and employees affected by its closure.
Craig Shephard from administrators KordaMentha said AFD’s closure would affect 260 employees, 100 franchisees and their 100,000 customers around the country.
Mr Skene said Camperdown Dairy had been selling some branded milk to AFD before its collapse but was no longer contract packing AFD’s house brand milk.
He said Camperdown Dairy had “a lot of good business coming through the sales pipeline” and expected to start construction later this year of a new milk processing and drying factory on 4.4 hectares (10 acres) on the Old Geelong Road at Camperdown.
“It will be a major investment,” Mr Skene said.
He said the company was processing between 15-20 million litres of milk a year, selling its own brand fresh milk products as well as Camperdown Dairy yoghurts, bulk and consumer pack butter.
Most of the market for its products were in Victoria, Mr Skene said.
