PREMIUM

  • David Vigario

    Merida

Updated Friday, March 18, 2022-02:02

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The

dairy industry

is on the "

verge of collapse

" in its activity, having paralyzed

more than 70% of its production

due to the indefinite strike in the transport sector, thus interrupting the entire chain of work carried out by the industries.

It is about the interruption of the process of

collecting raw milk from farmers

, its

transformation

into dairy products and derivatives, and the final preparation with its

packaging

for its commercialization for consumption by citizens.

Many of them went to supermarkets en masse during the day to deplete many of the milk packs on the shelves due to the possibility of a lack of supply in retail establishments.

In this way, and due to the difficulty in the transit of trucks,

the activity has been practically interrupted

in most of the

1,600

authorized plants that the sector has throughout Spain.

Luis Calabozo

, general director of the National Federation of Dairy Industries (

Fenil

), which brings together 60 companies that transform 95% of the total milk produced, warns that in the plants "

the capacity for packaging

, storage and management of a highly perishable and essential food for daily consumption".

The main

problems

are happening in

Galicia

, where around

40% of the national milk production

is produced (more than three of the 8.4 million tons per year).

The largest industry operates in this community,

Lactadis

(also with plants in Andalusia), which yesterday completely stopped its production.

"The tension and problems in this area are still very strong," describes

Ramón Artime

, head of the dairy sector at

Asaja Nacional.

The other large national company,

Capsa Food

(Central Lechera Asturiana), did manage in the last few hours to withdraw part of the production from its supplier farmers, but it has already reached "its limit" of storage in its main facilities (Asturias, Galicia and Madrid) due to the impossibility of distributing the goods by road.

This is unbearable, and on top of that now without being able to sell the milk because the trucks can't get there;

this is the lace

Ramon Artime, ASAJA

Other communities with special incidence are

Castilla-León, Castilla-La Mancha, Andalucía, Asturias, Cantabria and Murcia,

while in Catalonia, the Valencian Community or the Basque Country the situation is less serious, as confirmed by Luis Calabozo: "

We do not want to create alarm but we are facing a serious problem

and from the sector we make a call for help and alert about what is happening and could happen in our facilities".

In total, there are some

22,000 cattle, goat and sheep farms,

which are encountering many difficulties so that their milk production reaches the industries.

"This is a product that cannot be stored and the one that is already in these silos in recent days is no longer in these warehouses."

To all this is added the lack of packaging and materials

in the production plants, such as pallets, plastics, caps and the boxes themselves where the milk is packaged after its treatment for transport and marketing.

ANNUAL PRODUCTION

Spain produces

8.5 million tons of milk

annually (7.5 from cows, 0.5 from sheep and 0.5 from goats) for a

global turnover of 13 million euros

(9,500 from industries and the rest from ranchers), reached 2% of the country's national production and 8.5% of employment in the agri-food sector as a whole, with some 60,000 direct jobs (half in industry and the other part in farm work agrarian).

Asaja's representative,

Ramón Artime

, regrets that the strike is assuming "

the lace to the farmers

", who had already been maintaining a strong struggle with the industry and distribution to obtain a better price for milk (0.34 cents per liter last year has gone to 0.37 in 2022), to which must be added the

disproportionate rise in inputs

suffered by the entire agricultural sector.

"This is unbearable, and on top of that now we can't sell the milk because the trucks can't get there; this is the last straw," he adds.

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