Foreign ownership of Australian dairy industry to intensify

Written by: Duncan B. on 25 August 2025

The degree of the concentration of foreign ownership of the Australian dairy processing industry is about to intensify with the announcement by New Zealand-owned Fonterra that they are to sell their Australian operations to the giant French dairy company Lactalis in a $3.5 billion deal.

This will leave Lactalis and the Canadian-owned Saputo in control of a large section of the Australian dairy processing industry.

A bid by Australian-owned Bega was not enough to win the race for Fonterra. The ACCC has already indicated that it will not oppose the deal, but dairy farmers are worried that the combination of the two biggest players in the industry will reduce competition at the farm gate for their milk.

This comes as it was recently announced that total Australian milk production has fallen again. Australia’s total milk production in 2024-25 was 8.315 billion litres. This is predicted to fall to 8.147 billion litres this season. Reasons for this fall include droughts and floods in dairying areas, and more dairy farmers changing to other types of farming, or leaving farming altogether because of the  increasing costs of inputs, and farm-gate prices for their milk that are not enough to cover production costs.

As many Australian farmers are abandoning dairying, Canadian pension fund PSP is becoming a major player in Australian dairying through their subsidiary Aurora Dairy. They have 450 employees and 48000 cows producing 280 million litres of milk on 54 farms.

We must oppose the continuing take -over of Australian agriculture by foreign interests which is an  attack on Australian Independence. 

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