Ornua from the

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

"Ór Nua" meaning "new gold" (known as The Irish Dairy Board from 1961 to 2015) is an Irish agricultural cooperative, which markets and sells dairy products on behalf of its members: Irish dairy processors and Irish dairy farmers. The co-operative is Ireland’s largest exporter of Irish dairy products and owns the Kerrygold butter and cheese brand as well as Kerrygold Irish Cream Liqueur. In addition to the Kerrygold brand, its brand portfolio includes Pilgrims Choice, Dubliner, Shannongold, and BEO milk powder.

History

The Irish Dairy Board was established by an act of the Oireachtas, the Dairy Produce Marketing Act 1961, and replaced the earlier Butter Marketing Committee. It was created to centralise the overseas marketing of Irish dairy products to achieve

economies of scale In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables ...

and greater

brand recognition Brand awareness is the extent to which customers are able to recall or recognize a brand under different conditions. Brand awareness is one of two dimensions from brand knowledge, an associative network memory model. Brand awareness is a key consi ...

. At the time of the Board's creation, the European Economic Community's market was closed to Irish butter, and the United Kingdom market limited Irish imports by an

import quota An import quota is a type of trade restriction that sets a physical limit on the quantity of a good that can be imported into a country in a given period of time. Quotas, like other trade restrictions, are typically used to benefit the producers ...

. The name Kerrygold was selected to evoke "farming, naturalness, goodness and above all quality milk" as well as a sense of Irishness. In October 1962, the Board successfully test-launched the Kerrygold brand in the Winterhill area of North West England. When Ireland joined the EEC in 1973, the Board began expanding its presence to continental Europe, beginning with the

North Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia (german: Nordrhein-Westfalen, ; li, Noordrien-Wesfale ; nds, Noordrhien-Westfalen; ksh, Noodrhing-Wäßßfaale), commonly shortened to NRW (), is a state (''Land'') in Western Germany. With more than 18 million inha ...

state of Germany. By 1982, Kerrygold had national distribution in Germany. On 31 March 2015, the Board assumed a new corporate identity as Ornua: "The Home of Irish Dairy".

Today

Currently, Ornua operates from 19 subsidiaries worldwide, with pre-packing and blending facilities located in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...

, the

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and the Middle East. A €36m state-of-the-art Kerrygold butter production and packing plant (Kerrygold Park) has been constructed in

Mitchelstown Mitchelstown () is a town in County Cork, Ireland with a population of approximately 3,740. Mitchelstown is situated in the valley to the south of the Galtee Mountains, 12 km south-west of the Mitchelstown Caves, 28 km from Cahir, 50 ...

County Cork County Cork ( ga, Contae Chorcaí) is the largest and the southernmost county of Ireland, named after the city of Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the province of Munster and the Southern Region. Its largest market towns a ...

. In 2020, Ornua announced an investment of £3m in its Leek production facilities, to boost capacity in response to greater consumer demand for its cheese products and bringing total annual production to more than 110,000 tonnes. In 2014, the Spanish cheese manufacturer Luxtor, previously a subsidiary of the system catering chain Telepizza, was taken over. Kerrygold is the second highest-selling butter in the United States and the highest-selling butter in Ireland as of 2019. Butter portions and cheese items are also available for bulk consumers.

Awards

The Irish Dairy Board was awarded Exporter of the Year by the Irish Exporters in 2010.

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control Marketing boards Agricultural marketing cooperatives Agriculture in the Republic of Ireland Dairy products companies of Ireland Cooperatives in Ireland Cooperatives in the Republic of Ireland Food and drink companies based in Dublin (city) Irish brands