A commitment that there would be "no nasty shocks" this year for shareholders of Glanbia, like the one that cost the company €90 million last year, was given yesterday.

Managing director, Mr John Moloney, said that the €90 million referred to by shareholder, Mr Brendan Whelan, was an exceptional item caused by a loss of €49 million relating to the sale of the British cheese and cooked sliced meat businesses and €41 million relating to goodwill that had been written off.

He told another shareholder, Mr Matt O'Keeffe, that operating profit for 2004 was in line with market expectations.

When he was pressed to elaborate, he said that the company would have profits of between 19.8 to 20 cents per share.

After the meeting, Mr Moloney was bullish about the company's prospects of expanding its ingredients business to Latin America and Asia through its new milk-processing capabilities being developed in Uruguay under the terms of a joint venture.

Developing nutritional products, especially for the US market, was moving well, he said, and would be boosted by the completion of the Idaho protein isolate facility.

The completion of the cheese facility in Idaho, USA would allow the plant to process 135,000 tonnes of product. He put this in context by pointing out that Ireland, as a whole, processed 115,000 tonnes of cheese per year.

"We will be able to produce an extra 15 per cent of product and this has already been pre-sold," Mr Moloney told the meeting in Kilkenny's Newpark Hotel.

On dairy matters, he said there was no need to change the current milk price being paid to farmers given current market conditions.

He made the comments after the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) criticised Glanbia for not giving a commitment on milk price up to the end of July.