THE GALWAY MILK COMPANY, THE EARLY YEARS (12 05 2014)
Time was when the milk farmer’s delivery man used to park his pony and trap or his donkey and cart outside your house, pour your measure of milk into a special measuring jug, and from there into your big jug or can or pail which was left outside the door. He would have a few large churns in the cart with taps at the bottom. These milkmen had their own route and their own customers, and did not try to steal other’s customers. The milk came directly from the cow to the customer.
Among those milkmen were Peadar Condon from Knocknacarra, Mrs. Conneely from Furbo and Frank Cosgrove who kept his cattle in a field on Threadneedle Road. They all covered parts of Salthill. Paddy Kelly who lived near Cameron’s Post Office in Bohermore and Mickey and Charley Hughes from Prospect Hill covered Bohermore. Julia and Bertie Keane from Rahoon covered Shantalla and Lower Salthill. The Codyres, Martin McGrath and the Feeneys, all from Rahoon also had their runs, as did the Lawless family from Daingean. A Mr. Curran from Barna sold buttermilk.
At the end of the 1940’s, a number of Irish Army personnel were about to retire, among them Colonel Seamus Timoney. He and his wife Nancy discussed the idea of producing pasteurised milk and they got advice from some Northern friends of theirs, the Kennedys who were already producing pasteurised milk on a commercial basis.
The Timoneys with the help of Commandant Seán O’Connor decided to set up Comhlucht Bainne na Gaillimhe, also known as The Galway Milk Company. Their idea was to provide clean pasteurised milk in sterilised and sealed bottles in the city, to increase the supply of milk by creating a milk market for County Galway farmers, and to undertake the manufacture from surplus milk of various food products.
This was an ambitious undertaking just after the war, difficult and financially risky. There was no machinery available or no milk supplies. Information meetings were organised at crossroads and chapel gates to encourage farmers to embrace the idea. It was not intended that the new enterprise would militate in any way against the current producer-distributors. On the contrary, it was proposed to facilitate them by pasteurising their milk at as reasonable a price as possible, between a farthing and a halfpenny a pint.
The Company’s factory was erected at the junction of the Oranmore/Ballyloughane roads. It was a temporary corrugated iron affair and included a laboratory. A part time analyst was employed at the start and all milk arriving at the factory was subject to the usual tests of cleanliness and contents of fats and non-fatty solids, the general regulations regarding milk standards applied.
One of the directors, Wyndham Waithman of Murrough House ‘with bits and pieces acquired and with a great deal of improvisation and feats of engineering, commenced processing in the Summer of 1948’.
Things began to go well from the start and by the following years, farmers who had resisted change were being encouraged to upgrade their herds and remodel their milking procedures. That year also, a new factory building was completed by Stewarts Building Contractors. Soon, more up to date equipment came on the market and the company was the first in Ireland to install the new Alfa Revolutionary Compact pasteurising unit, where the milk, having passed through a cooling process and on to the bottling machine where it was fed into sterilised bottles, was capped automatically and conveyed by belt to the cold storage room to await delivery to customers.
By the early 1950’s the company was expanding rapidly and it needed the skilled hands of a manager and administrator. Charley McCarthy from Cork was appointed and over a period of 20 years he greatly expanded the business and developed it to its full potential, including acting as distributor for Tulira Farm Eggs. It became one of the major dairies in the west. The business was eventually taken over by Arrabawn.
Our two photographs of the original shed and all the above information were kindly given to us by Gearóid Timoney from Dublin.
