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Foremost Farms & Michigan Milk make official partnership

 

Two dairy cooperatives have announced an expanded strategic alliance in Michigan.

Foremost Farms USA and Michigan Milk Producers Association have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to maximize members’ returns through mutual investments.

Foremost Farms Chief Operating Officer Ralph Briggs tells Brownfield the partnership will ultimately create savings in efficiencies and benefit members.  “We have a lot of ideas and I think we’re in the early stages of exploring what are the opportunities?  But from a high level, it looks like there inherently could be significant opportunities in both co-ops to look at what we could do together,”  he says.

Briggs says this is Foremost’s first agreement of its kind with another co-op. Is it an early sign of a merger?  “I would say that’s way too early to conclude anything like that,” he says.

The two co-ops currently have partnerships at MMPA’s Constantine, Michigan plant and Middlebury Cheese Company in Indiana. MMPA member milk will also be processed at Foremost’s new Greenville, Michigan plant once operational this November.

Foremost is the nation’s eighth largest farmer-owned milk processing and marketing cooperative with about 1,300 dairy farmer members and annual sales of $1.5 billion.

MMPA serves nearly 1,700 dairy farms in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin and handles about five billion pounds of milk annually.

AUDIO: Interview with Ralph Briggs