Full coverage: Agribusiness

McDonald's is the latest food business to announce a plant-based alternative for next year. We don’t know yet if shifts in consumer demand away from meat and dairy are a temporary fad or deep-seated trends. Either way, a public stake in this emerging industry would help manage what the future holds for Irish farmers.

Thousands of farmers in the co-op at the origin of Kerry Group were targeted by the tax authority over the status of so-called patronage shares. A new landmark case has revealed how the probe came unstuck.

Dairy food manufacturer Glenisk is expanding to double production. From a site with no electricity, Vincent Cleary has grown the family business to the forefront of Ireland’s organic industry – despite the disdain he says he has faced from official Ireland.

The Belfast-based livestock nutrition company is investing massively in its new global research and development centre in Co Meath, where it hopes to produce carbon-neutral beef and dairy by 2025. But the lenders behind a €118m refinancing package are keeping a close watch as its existing business faces the challenges of Brexit and Covid-19. To provide guarantees, Owen Brennan’s group has been reorganising.

Just one year ago, meat factories now at the centre of Covid-19 outbreaks were facing another storm, with pickets at their gates. Complaints gave rise to an examination of competition in the sector, but a trawl of the 316 files in the case shows that while the CCPC found time to threaten protesting farmers with legal action, the watchdog stopped short of contacting beef barons.

Live streams, smartphone bids and USB gavels became features of livestock sales as soon as the Covid-19 lockdown closed marts to the public. Technology providers are vying for this business, which appears to be here to stay.

The Currency was first to report on the overvaluation of the north-western agribusiness’s sports nutrition subsidiary My Goodness, and annual accounts have now confirmed an asset write-down. But there is much more to the co-op – and other options to sustain it into the future.

The head of global agribusiness Alltech finds himself hosting the first virtual edition of his company’s popular annual industry conference. He discusses how food production can navigate “the next normal”, and why his $3 billion firm remains private even as it enters new areas of digital technology and medicine.

Butter prices are down, farmers are getting less for their milk and cheese stocks are going into cold stores. But unlike other sectors, Ireland’s dairy industry is working as one and its businesses entered the crisis with strong balance sheets.

As a food and drinks business specialist with ifac and a council member of the Ireland China Business Association, Lorcan Bannon has spent some time speaking with industry experts in China to get a perspective on what Irish food and drinks businesses can expect post the initial surge of Covid-19.