Dairy Crest continue to be silent about the cow situation.
The summer months mean many are on holiday and things seem to have quietened down a little on the cow news front.
This doesn’t mean giving up!
I have bought a share in Dairy Crest, as I felt it might strengthen my position as a campaigner and now shareholder. Unfortunately I didn’t do this before the July 15th AGM which I presume I might have otherwise attended. Surely by next year it won’t be necessary…
I will be writing to the board of directors for further information and news in the next few days.
I have been reading up on the AGM notes and finances and see that despite cut backs, there was still plenty of profit for Dairy Crest in the last financial year (several million pounds) and so, I do feel that spending, what I feel must be at most £10,000 on new cows (and probably just to attach the original cows back a lot less) using a buildings or marketing budget must not be beyond the realms of impossibility.
Why would Dairy Crest delay and not do this? I still wonder if their intention is to shut down the Hanworth Dairy and sell off the building. I can’t see any logical reason behind delaying the cow replacement, especially now in light of the 7,500 signatures and rising, and strong local interest and press coverage. They have denied this so far however.
Where do I get my £10,000 figure from? Well it’s a “guesstimate”, and I have no idea of what the actual condition of the existing cows and the roof are, but I do know that there’s a company selling full size fibre glass cows for £950 each. Since these ones wouldn’t need to be so big and only 6 are needed, even with delivery I would expect they could be provided for around £5k to 6k. That leaves 4k for the building and fixings which sounds doable to my layman’s mind.
It would be great if Dairy Crest confirmed whether they still have the old cows stored somewhere safely, and what costs they estimate might be involved with restoring or replacing them. If it did come to funding from elsewhere (the locals or the council etc.) then this is pretty important information.
If Dairy Crest are really short of money, I expect there may be plenty of companies willing to sponsor the cows on their roof (or a single cow) in return for their logo on the building. Quite why Dairy Crest would want that I have no idea, but they don’t seem to be keen on marketing and public relations at the moment themselves.