Fairgo Dairy a raging success

Five years ago Shane Knuth from KAP led a campaign to get fairer prices for Queensland dairy farmers. As a result of this, the labour government funded the Fairgo Dairy project for QDO. The aim of this project was broadly around solving the problems of the dairy supply chain by specifically focusing on consumers and the retail sector given the negative impacts of $1/L milk on the dairy supply chain.

QDO utilised the funding to do a range of things. Most importantly, we ran a concerted consumer focused marketing campaign to destroy $1/L. This was an extremely successful campaign which started in late 2018 and gained tremendous consumer support and gained the attention of major media outlets Australia wide. In addition, retailers and politicians were acutely aware of what we were doing and became actively involved.

As a direct result of our campaign, $1/L milk ended in February 2019 thanks to Woolworths deciding that the time was right to lift their price to $1.10/L. A domino affect followed and all retailers matched Woolworths and milk processors were then able to lift their brand prices as well.

Fast forward three and half years to today and the retail milk price for retail brands is now $1.50-$1.60 a litre. $1/L is now buried in the past and will never return. Over the next year, further retail price increases will occur and a price of $1.70-$1.80 is expected to be the norm later this year or early next. The future is now much brighter for dairy farmers and processors around Australia.

None of this would have happened if Shane Knuth didn’t fight for a fair price for Queensland dairy farmers and if Minister Mark Furner didn’t fund the Fairgo Dairy project. All dairy farmers should be very grateful to Shane and Mark so thank you on their behalf.

Eric Danzi, co-CEO eastAUSmilk