Tasmania's peak farming body says the planned closure of the King Island Dairy and the loss of its cheese brand is heartbreaking for farmers. There are real fears the decision will have a significant social and economic impact on the island.
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00:00I'm here outside this 100-year-old dairy facility on King Island.
00:07It employs about 58 people directly, but many more down the supply chain.
00:12We're talking packers, wrappers, truck drivers, farmers who supply the milk to the factory.
00:19All that staff amounts to about 6% of the island's population.
00:24What we've heard from this factory, from locals, is that without this factory, many of these people would have to leave.
00:32There's no other jobs here for them, particularly the skilled workers on King Island.
00:37They take their families with them, ripping them out of the community, taking their business with them as well.
00:43Dairy giant Saputo made this announcement yesterday.
00:47We heard that in about nine months this facility and the iconic cheeses that come from it would be no more.
00:56We understand those workers were given some notice, but the farmers were not.
01:01We've also heard from farmers that transitioning from their farms, from a dairy operation to a beef operation or closing them down, is a multi-year process.
01:11But they've been given nine months to make a decision on their livelihood.
01:16This comes on the back of a really tough year for farming on the island.
01:20We've got record droughts. It doesn't look like it at the moment, but it's been extremely dry.
01:26Farmers in debt trying to feed their animals, and now this news for them.
01:31On the cheese side, Saputo, which is a multi-billion dollar company headquartered in Canada, says that this brand just wasn't competitive in the market anymore.
01:43And in other Tasmanian brands you might be familiar with, Mersey Valley or The Heritage, they say they're doing really well, but this brand is not keeping up.
01:52It speaks perhaps to the ballooning cost of manufacturing in Australia, where even the slightest extra cost, such as shipping over the Bass Strait, can be really unappealing to a large multinational corporation.
02:06In the dairy space already, Australia doesn't produce enough milk for itself, so this could open the door for even more imports.