Shares in focus: Can Dairy Crest pull out of the doldrums?

Milk prices are falling, but Dairy Crest might have an ace up its sleeve. Should you buy the shares? Phil Oakley investigates.

The maker of Country Life butter and Cathedral City cheese seems to be stuckin the middle of a tense relationship between farmers and supermarkets.

Dairy farmers have struggled for years to get a fair price for their milk and make a profit from selling it. The supermarkets have squeezed them hard. This has made life hard for the middleman, Dairy Crest. It needs a reliable source of milk for its more profitable butters and cheeses, but also needs to make a profit selling milk.

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Phil spent 13 years as an investment analyst for both stockbroking and fund management companies.

 

After graduating with a MSc in International Banking, Economics & Finance from Liverpool Business School in 1996, Phil went to work for BWD Rensburg, a Liverpool based investment manager. In 2001, he joined ABN AMRO as a transport analyst. After a brief spell as a food retail analyst, he spent five years with ABN's very successful UK Smaller Companies team where he covered engineering, transport and support services stocks.

 

In 2007, Phil joined Halbis Capital Management as a European equities analyst. He began writing for MoneyWeek in 2010.