UNDER the scorching New Mexico sun, Ted Boersma’s 3,400 cows are fighting to get into the shade as they wait to be ushered into the cool of the milking parlour.

Boersma milks about 440 cows an hour and can get through the herd in about seven and a half hours. It is factory farming at its most efficient.

Next door, the Southwest Cheese (SWC) processing plant, which Boersma among others will supply, is getting ready for its opening. It will be the third largest in America and one of the biggest in the world — and it is half owned by Glanbia, the Irish food giant.

“This is a big business and these boys have spotted an opportunity,” said Boersma.

When the plant is running at full tilt early next year, it will process more than 250m lb of cheese. The behemoth is expected to achieve annualised revenues of $350m (€278m).

When added to Glanbia’s capacity in Idaho, the Irish group will control about 16.5% of cheese output in America. While the cheese business is impressive, it is the by-product, whey, which the former Irish co-operative believes it can makes its fortune.

It is all a far cry from Glanbia’s roots, which are firmly embedded in the Irish dairy co-operative movement. Formed in 1997 through the merger of Avonmore and Waterford Foods, the company has had its share of growing pains.

These include a slew of profit warnings, a number of loss-making businesses, a large number of staff redundancies and the ebb and flow of its share price over the past decade.

“We drove into an empty field in Clovis in February 2004 and have built a new business from the ground up,” says John Moloney, Glanbia’s group managing director. “We’ve built a new joint-venture business in Nigeria (selling powdered milk) over the past two years and we’re selling into markets in South America and China. We had to make some difficult decisions, but I’m confident about the future.”

Dairy farming may be in decline in Ireland, but in America the industry is simply relocating from California and the upper-midwest to the southwestern state of New Mexico.

Farmers have been drawn by cheap land, a can-do attitude and a climate that lends itself to year-round cultivation. The volume of milk production in New Mexico has increased 13.5% in the year to date.

Americans love their cheese. They rank alongside the French and Greeks in annual consumption and very little of the production is sold overseas. “Every American eats a lot of cheese,” said Boersma, himself a keen consumer.

SWC will produce about 115,000 tons of cheese a year. The market has trebled in size since 1970 and is growing by a couple of percentage points each year.