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THE FORMER DONEGAL Creameries co-op just managed to scrape together a profit after a tough year for its potato business.
The publicly-listed company, now called the Donegal Investment Group (DIG), recorded a 7% fall in its revenues last year.
The Letterkenny-based group said it had “experienced extremely difficult trading conditions” in its seed potato business last year because of strong European harvests and a weak market for table spuds.
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In its preliminary results for last year, DIG also blamed the poor performance of its animal feeds business for the drop in its income and profitability.
It turned an operating profit of €850,000 for the year, down from nearly €3 million in 2013, as part of what analysts called a “disappointing” set of results.
The announcement was enough to wipe about 15% – or nearly €9 million – from the company’s share value this morning, although it later regained almost all that value.
But the company’s chairman, Geoffrey Vance, said DIG had made “exceptional progress” with its Nomadic dairy brand in the UK despite the poor results in other parts of its operations.
DIG changed its name in 2013 from Donegal Creameries, which began life with the merger of several dairy co-ops in the county, after expanding its business from milk into everything from property management to confectionery, potatoes and mushrooms.
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Those Dutch, Italian, Israeli, UK, French and Spanish potato imports have had an effect.
There is a brilliant new buy local campaign underway in Australia where consumers protest the importation of products in supermarkets.
If they find imported products on the shelves where local products could be sold, they turn the stock upside down and back to front.
We’d be very very busy in our shops if we adopted this approach.
Some bad fine gael labour decissions ruined ireland and wrecked society ,pushing the gap between rich and poor and driving the middle class into poverty and still kenny and co continue their drive to pay the bankers fill the riches in society pockets with the ill gotten gains of the back of the poor while the goverment hold the media in their pockets
Shambles
They should get into the frozen chip business as currently every frozen chip sold in Ireland is imported, mainly from Holland and the UK. Would prove a good export item too!
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