FIVEMILETOWN Co-operative Society shareholders have been offered £10,000 each from Glanbia, a shareholder has claimed.

However, the 39 shareholders are “concerned” by the lack of contact from either the Creamery Management or Glanbia since April 3, the night they voted to accept the deal.

It was “rather a shock” to them that the Creamery was making losses of approximately £100,000 per month for the last two years (£1.2 million per year). They are annoyed that they were not made aware of this at an earlier stage.

The signing of legal contracts is underway after 83 per cent of the shareholders voted in favour of forming a long-term relationship with Glanbia Ingredients Ireland (GIIL) on April 3.

A five year contract will see the Fivemiletown milk pool of 25m litres per annum being supplied to GIIL and Fivemiletown suppliers receiving an advisory service from GIIL. Fivemiletown cheese brands will be sold to GIIL, except for Boilie goat’s cheese.

The fifty creamery staff are on a 30 day consultation to negotiate the terms of their redundancy packages.

The local dairy farmer is one of the milk suppliers who is also a shareholder. He is concerned because he “doesn’t know what’s required of us going forward”.

Last week The Impartial Reporter saw a letter from General Manager of the Creamery, Guy Simpson. It was addressed to suppliers and stated that the contracts with Glanbia would be signed by April 30. The letter told suppliers that they must secure a purchase order reference number before payment will be authorised. The shareholders have not received that letter.

“We don’t know what’s happened since that night” the shareholder tells The Impartial Reporter this week. He says the shareholders want to know who will pay them for April’s milk, which was sent to Fivemiletown as usual, and is due to be paid on May 12. They also want to hear more about the £10,000 they were offered.

“Who will pay us for April’s milk and will it be at Fivemiletown’s base price of 33 pence per litre or Glanbia’s base price of 32.9 pence per litre?” he wonders.

“It [£10,000] was mentioned by Glanbia that night. We are waiting to hear whether or not we will get that money,” he confirms.

Looking back, his concerns began in 2012 when the Creamery lost its cheese-curd contract with Kerry Group. It was around that time that the annual AGMs and the process of voting on a new Chair and Vice-Chair of the shareholder committee were ended, he claims.

“We used to have an AGM where we would get to vote and the accounts were read out. That hasn’t happened in the last two years. It concerned us greatly.” He added that any time these concerns were raised with management, “we were told that things were looking up”.

He still insists that “there should have been more offers on the table”. He would not reveal how he voted on the night, saying; “A lot of people were unhappy, but the meeting went on well after midnight and people were tired and thought: ‘We’d better get it sorted.’” He claimed: “They told us they didn’t have anything in writing from Lakeland. It seemed that the view from the top table (i.e. the Chair and Vice Chair of the shareholder committee, and the Creamery Accountant and General Manager, Guy Simpson) was Glanbia or nothing.” He adds: “We were rushed into it.” He acknowledges that 50 people will lose their jobs and has been approached by some of the workers who are “annoyed” about the way the shareholders voted. “As far as we are concerned, [the co-op] has been losing a vast amount of shareholder money and we weren’t being told all the facts,” he states.

He concludes: “We are not sure what’s next. We want to know what’s required of us going forward.” Fivemiletown Management refused to comment.