The supermarket price wars have been difficult for dairy producers and suppliers, with Longwarry Food Park forced to concentrate on the export market.
At a recent BRW/GE Capital ‘Momentum For The Mid-Market’ industry discussion panel, Longwarry’s founder and CEO Rakesh Aggarwal said that within three months of its attempt to sell domestically, Coles had begun selling $1 milk.
It has forced Longwarry and Aggarwal to concentrate on the Asian market, BRW reports.
“In the last six months, we’ve brought down our volume of business with the supermarkets; we were doing 20 per cent last year and next year we’ll probably do seven per cent,” BRW reports him as saying.
The last four years had seen, according to Aggarwal, “the price of milk [go up] about 15 cents, but the price supermarkets are willing to pay has come down seven cents.”