Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 15 January 2015

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Dairy Sector: Irish Dairy Board

10:10 am

Mr. Aaron Forde:

Yes. From the IDB point of view, we are active in both markets. We have been in China for some time and we entered the mass market there a number of months ago with liquid milk. That has made a promising start. In the case of Russia, it is out of many people's hands. It came as a bolt from the blue, as you said. We had a team of ten people in Russia building Kerrygold and some of the other brands. That is difficult for us now, but we have retained a small team there to keep our shelf space. We are trying to be creative about how we do that so when the market reopens there is potential to build on the investment that has already been made and we can get up and running again very quickly.