With only 100 million gallons of milk to be bothered about, Denis Brosnan probably can afford to mollycoddle his milk suppliers in north Kerry by paying them a milk price that generates minimal profits for Kerry's dairy business.

All Brosnan wants from his dairy business is enough profit to cover capital replacement costs.

As long as Kerry is churning out huge profits from its ingredients and consumer foods business, the Kerry boss will be indulged in his altruism by his institutional investors.

But if the ingredients business turns down, questions will be asked as to why Kerry pays so much for its raw material that it runs a dairy business at little more than breakeven.

Kerry has shown that it can be ruthless when it comes to shutting down non-productive plants.

That said, there is no sign of any downturn in Kerry's ingredients business, which seems set for continued strong growth as the world population turns increasingly towards convenience foods.

Kerry Co-op's 37 per cent stake in Kerry Group is an incongruity and in need of a severe reduction.

By all accounts, Mr Brosnan would be delighted to see that stake fall towards the 20 per cent minimum that current co-op rules allow, but finding a mechanism to improve Kerry's poor liquidity is proving difficult.

Spinning out 13 per cent of the co-op's then 52 per cent of the plc directly to co-op members a few years ago was partly aimed at improving Kerry's liquidity. The only problem was, however, that those co-op members who got shares in that spin-out have sat on them and there has been negligible improvement in liquidity with institutions finding it impossible to buy in any size.

Mr Brosnan made it clear that he would like to be in a position where US institutions, which put money into Kerry's competitors like McCormick's and IFF, would also invest in Kerry stock.

But US investors will only invest where they can buy and sell in real size, and real size in this context means millions of shares.