Parmalat Suffers as Australian Grocers Reduce Milk to $1: Retail

Tim Bale’s dairy farm barely broke even in six years as mergers of processors and competition between supermarkets Coles and Woolworths Ltd. pushed down milk prices. So 14 months ago, he decided to cut out the middleman.

“The milk processors would do a deal with Woolworths and then come back to us and drop our price,” he said by phone. “So I wrote to Woolworths and said, ‘We can sell you milk here that’s better than what you’re getting.”