New book tells Denis Brosnan's remarkable journey with Kerry Co-op

Central to that journey was the visionary leadership of Denis Brosnan, a dairy and food science graduate from UCC and a farmer’s son from Kilflynn in North Kerry.

He began his career with Golden Vale in Charleville, Co Cork, where he greatly impressed managing director Dave O'Loughlin, who described him as a humdinger who would get places.

Brosnan was based in London and travelling the world as the group’s export sales manager, when O’Loughlin, a former Irish rugby international, died suddenly in 1971, aged 55.

The Kerry man was tipped by many people to succeed O’Loughlin, but he was surprisingly turned down for the job because he was deemed to be too young. He was 27.

That same year, a group of progressive dairy farmers in North Kerry were setting up a new milk processing factory in Listowel with the help of what later became the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society (ICOS) and its managing director Jim O’Mahony.

Eddie Hayes, a man with a visionary outlook, was the driving force behind the move to establish North Kerry Milk Products, along with Frank Wall, Tarbert, another pioneering leader with impeccable business judgement.

Denis Brosnan’s growing reputation was known to Hayes, a neighbour from Kilflynn, who contacted him in London. He got the job following an interview.

It was a daunting undertaking. Brosnan arrived in Listowel to set up the factory in a muddy field. He had no staff, no office and no telephone. His first major investment decision was to rent a 22ft caravan for £4 a week. This was placed in the parking lot of the construction site and served as an office.

Milk processing was fragmented in Kerry, with its back to the Atlantic Ocean and facing towards Cork, location of three of the country’s “Big Five” co-ops, Ballyclough, Golden Vale and Mitchelstown.

The years that followed were exciting, saw inspired leadership, major expansions, controversies, deep-rooted pride, creamery mergers and acquisitions and divisive “milk wars”.

It all led to the formation of Kerry Co-op in 1973 and the launch in 1986 of Kerry Group as a plc, now employing 23,000 people globally with reported revenue of €8bn last year.

Con Dennehy’s book of almost 500 pages traces the co-op’s journey from its foundation to the present day including the role it has played in the lives of farm families and the impact it has on sporting, cultural and community life in Kerry and elsewhere.

The book, featuring 259 photographs, paints a portrait of people from Kerry, Clare, Limerick and parts of Cork who contributed to the co-op’s success. It contains 45 interviews with founders, directors, board members, farmers and employees in Kerry, Limerick, Clare, South Galway and North Cork.

It also provides an insight into the pioneering spirit, business acumen and vision of the co-op’s original founders, especially Eddie Hayes and Frank Wall. Both were strong advocates for Kerry farmers controlling their own industry.

Anne Maria Keane Cotter from Kilmorna, the co-op’s first woman chairperson, is quoted in the book as saying: “We can never underestimate the wealth Kerry Co-op has brought to the counties, to the farm families and the employment they have created.” 

That trend continues with the recent approval by Kerry Co-op shareholders to buy Kerry Group’s dairy division in two stages for €500m. The deal allows almost 12,000 farmers and other shareholders to cash in €1.4bn worth of shares.

With James Tangney as chairperson, Kerry Co-op now heads into what promises to be an exciting new era, with the memories of how it all began recalled in the book.

John C. O’Connor, Anniversary Committee chairperson, notes in a foreword that the early 1970s was a time of transformation in Kerry’s agricultural landscape. From the back of his father’s Hillman Hunter car, while he encouraged the farmers to invest in the new co-op, he was privy to real-time opinions.

“Excitement, worry, the fear of the unknown and possible changes to farm practices were common themes in their conversations. Any concerns were short lived as, under the stewardship of Denis Brosnan, the co-op went on to huge success,” he writes.

Brosnan remained with the plc until he retired in 2003. He was followed by Hugh Friel, Stan McCarthy and Edmund Scanlon. His last major involvement with Kerry was taking over Golden Vale in 2001.

It saw him return, corporate style, to where his remarkable managerial journey began almost 30 years before. He told Con Dennehy that as he was going to exit Kerry in 2003, there was one last job he wanted to do and that was to attend the Golden Vale meetings with farmers prior to the takeover.

“We received almost unanimous approval from Golden Vale to join up with Kerry. When all that was achieved, I said my race is run. I started with Golden Vale, and I finished with Golden Vale.”