Nestle opens milk jobs
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by Juliet Parish • Food giant Nestle is on the hunt for hauliers to transport around 350 million litres of milk direct from farms to factories once the Milk Marketing Board's monopoly ends in April 1994.
Once the monopoly is lifted, its successor organisations are expected to arrange the transport of the remaining 350m litres of milk it uses in food manufacture every year. And opportunities for hauliers could increase further, says Nestle, if it eventually contracts out all its milk distribution.
Nestle will be looking for hauliers near its factories sited in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, Girvan, Ayrshire, Scotland; Omagh in the Republic of Ireland; and Dalston, Cumbria. Last week the company wrote to 8,000 farms, hoping to select 2,500 suppliers.
Successful hauliers must be familiar with farm collection procedures, able to work 365 days a year and have vehicles dedicated to milk distribution, says Nestle's milk purchasing manager John Bayerstock.
The company buys a twentieth of all UK milk and is talking to a number of operators. It hopes to announce its list in the autumn. It has rejected starting its own in-house fleet, because it wants to concentrate investment on its core business of food manufacturing.
The MMB currently uses around 10 hauliers to collect milk from farms and deliver it to Nestle factories. Some are likely to be among Nestle's final choice.
The Transport Development Group, which owns tanker subsidiaries Nexus and Linkman Tankers, is among the operators interested in winning such work.
But the Road Haulage Association warns hauliers to be cautious buying expensive tankers and moving into milk distribution in the hope of winning business. "Whether operators find the return in capital investment sufficiently attractive remains to be seen," says the RHA!s milk carrier group secretary, Tony Cook.