Changing course in the storm: a food industry group faced with the end of milk quotas

Ingredia, the subsidiary of a dairy cooperative in the Hauts-de-France region, has specialised in dairy ingredients and supplied the leading food industry companies in one hundred and twenty countries for sixty years. A few months after she became the company’s managing director, Sandrine Delory had to handle important problems associated with the end of milk quotas and the collapse of milk prices. Faced with these difficulties, she instigated three measures. These measures consisted of recruiting an independent administrator and thereby making the cooperative’s governance professional; creating a strategy to set them apart from their competitors when the end of the quotas could result in a tendency for all the companies to increase milk volumes; and bringing together dairy farmers with employees by means of a CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) policy based on preserving the environment and the traditional economy of the region. These latter factors were also in line with new consumer expectations. This was all the more difficult for Sandrine Delory because the dairy business is a very masculine world. The challenges were met and the results, even though they were a long time coming, are promising.