Milton Produce gave up delivering to private households in the parish at the turn of the year, although it is continuing to deliver to commercial business.
Director Nigel Stewart said that the round had been given up reluctantly.
‘It was a tough decision and we did not want to let our local customers down, but there is just no money in household deliveries,’ he said.
‘We tried to get someone else to take it on and would have given the round away for nothing.’
He said that after deregulation by the States there had been a steady decline in the number of milk rounds carrying out home deliveries.
‘There are probably only 10 milkmen left now and most of them are concentrating on commercial deliveries. You need a round of probably 600 to 800 households to now make it worthwhile.’
In 2015, the States voted to allow the Dairy to deal directly with commercial customers. This ‘open gate’ approach gave the dairy much more freedom over who it could sell to and at what price.
The previous system divided the island into zones, with the Dairy selling to one retailer per zone.
Milkman Mark Robilliard has 190 customers across the Western parishes and said he believed the home delivery of milk was ‘on the way out’.
‘I had 560 customers when I started in 1999. I’ve shrunk my area a bit but it has definitely dropped off,’ he said.
‘I could retire in two and a half years and although I’ll carry on I can’t see anyone taking on the round when I finish as there is no money in it. If I was trying to set up now or had a mortgage, it just wouldn’t pay.’
He said that as well as the number of customers the amount of milk being drunk by each household had also declined.
‘That impacts on whether it’s worthwhile. I have one old lady who only has half a litre a week. I’m losing money delivering to her but I don’t want to let her down.’
He added that it did not help that supermarkets tended to sell the milk at a cheaper price.
‘They don’t pass on the full price and that makes us less competitive. We only have one product and can’t do that,’ he said.
‘They can afford just to make few pence on a litre as it draws customers in to sell other products. One shop told me that the milk is always at the back of the store so customers have to walk past everything else.’
Milkman Matt Waterman said of the 30 or so members of the Guernsey Milk Retailers Association at the time of deregulation, he believed there were only five still working.
‘And of those one is very much part-time and another only has one customer, so no doorsteps,’ he said.
‘I’ve done a few crude calculations. Bear in mind that in a typical business anywhere, 80% of profit comes from 20% of its customers, how anybody thought that milk rounds based entirely on home deliveries would ever be viable I don’t know. I suspect there is still enough demand to keep a couple of us in milk if we covered half of the island each.’
However, one milkman, who asked not to be named, disagreed.
He has operated a round of over 500 customers for the past 11 years. In that time he has only missed one round – the day after Storm Goretti last month.
‘I don’t see any problem going forward,’ he said.
‘There is definitely a market. You just have to see the deliveries of food at night.
‘It’s not just milk. It’s orange juices, Apple juices, cranberry juices, then there’s cream. You can go as far as you want to go with it. I’ve had many people ask many times if I could deliver bread.’
He added that he was aware of a newspaper round now delivering milk as well.
‘As newspaper sales have declined they have taken to delivering milk too,’ he said. ‘That just shows the demand is still there.’
He said that when the pandemic hit in 2020 he added 170 customers to his round.
‘I thought when Covid was over I would lose them all, but I lost three. I get so much good feedback. I’ve got so many people who are housebound, and can’t get out. So I feel like I’m a little bit of a lifeline, it’s being part of the community.’
He said the only blot on the horizon was the Dairy itself.
‘It’s just so old and dated. You adapt or you die. And the Dairy is dying because apart from lactose-free milk, which they started two years ago, there’s been no new products. They got rid of the award-winning cheeses.
‘I don’t see anything positive coming out of the Dairy. That’s why even the farmers are talking about doing a Dairy of their own.’
The Dairy declined to comment.