Challenge:
Fivemiletown is an 118-year-old creamery which produces both speciality and mass-market cheese. After some tough trading conditions and the loss of a major contract, the creamery was in difficulty and with rumours swirling, the future was far from certain. Our role was to support the business through this testing time.
Strategy:
We delivered a root and branch analysis of product profitability and operating costs, enabling the business to have visibility of non-productive ‘value drags’ in its portfolio and allowing management to put in place corrective measures such as overhead reduction and exiting loss-making areas. In tandem, we launched an exhaustive search for new partners for the business for the longer term and supported management through this project
Results:
With our support, the business improved its profitability and was able to find an innovative new structure whereby the milk pool and the factory asset was maintained and cheese production strengthened, thus preserving the business for future generations.
