Kenilworth Dairies offers lifeline to Queensland dairy farm facing closure

A Queensland family that feared 80 years of dairying would end after a contract was not renewed has been offered a last-minute lifeline.

Kenilworth Dairies owner John Cochrane will buy and bottle some of the 10,500 litres of milk that the Rozynskis produce daily, under new single-origin brand One Farm, One Herd.

Its success, and the family's future in dairy farming, will depend on public demand for the 100 per cent Queensland milk.

Half of the drinking milk Queenslanders consume, an estimated 250-300 million litres a year, is trucked up from Victoria, where the climate makes it much cheaper to produce.

Jason Rozynski hopes that with the support his family has had on social media, people will get behind their fresh locally bottled milk.

"It's three generations of blood, sweat and tears and I tell you what, this has been the fight of our lives,"

Mr Rozynski said.

"We're prepared to fight for the industry and produce high quality milk from Queensland."

Kenilworth to the rescue

Mr Cochrane said he had been "sitting back" after processor Maleny Dairies gave the family the required three months' notice that it would not be renewing the Rozynski's contract.

He expected that Lactalis, Bega, Dairy Farmers or Norco would take their milk before the September 15 deadline, but the contract ended yesterday.

Queensland milk is in peak production at this time of year, and in lower demand.

Mr Cochrane stepped up to answer the Rozynski's request for help to save their two farms at Imbil in the Mary Valley, about 170 kilometres north west of Brisbane.

"To lose that quality of milk in this state would be a crime," Mr Cochrane, a former dairy farmer

said.

"We're going flat chat to get this brand up and running, we're looking for markets, we're looking for retailers.

"They want to help … they know their customers want Queensland local milk as well."

Mr Cochrane said if the Rozynski's Beez Knees Brown Swiss Dairy business closed, it would have serious implications for local businesses.

"Where they're getting fuel, and fertiliser and all their merchandise … all those businesses get affected severely," he said.

'A brilliant move'

Dairy farmer Joe Bradley, who advocates for the industry as the director of eastAUSmilk, said Kenilworth Dairies was "absolutely the hero" of the story.

"I congratulate them on what they've done; it's a brilliant move. We could not afford to lose the Rozynski family," Mr Bradley said.

Since deregulation in the year 2000, the number of dairy farms in Queensland has dried up, from 1,500 to fewer than 220.

Mr Bradley said the major processors' decision not to pick up the Rozynski's milk was "a bad, bad signal for the Queensland industry".

"We've got a lot of farmers at the moment who are second-guessing what they are doing, saying, 'Well, hang on, it's the Rozynski family this year, who's it going to be next year?'"

NSW to help

Mr Cochrane reached out to Richmond Dairies in northern New South Wales to turn the remainder of the Rozynski's Mary Valley milk into ingredients for the Australian manufacturing industry and exports.

Mr Rozynski said it would fetch far less than drinking milk, but could help tide them over until next year when milk was in shorter supply and there was a chance of picking up a larger processing contract in addition to Kenilworth Dairies.

Mr Cochrane has invested millions of dollars into growing Kenilworth Dairies since buying the factory and agritourism business in 2017.

He said taking on the Rozynski's milk would not affect his commitment to Kenilworth Dairies' own-branded milk and the farmers already supplying it.

Mr Rozynski said Mr Cochrane was a valued family friend and one of his father's best mates.

"John's always been there for the industry and always tried to support it," Mr Rozynski said.

"We're grateful to John and the team that they can have a crack at this when nobody else would."

Mr Cochrane said it would be at least two weeks before the barcodes were approved and labels printed to begin bottling the Rozynski's milk.