First, if Dean and DFA already have a failed past and a rocky current relationship, how will DFA make any money bottling and selling milk without lowering the price it pays for members’ milk it hopes to bottle?
Secondly, who exactly is DFA going to sell its members’ now-cheap milk to? Deans Foods’ biggest customer was Walmart. So, who’s left?
Well I'm sure the DOJ is looking into all that and will say no to any kind of deal.
Only thing rocky about the DFA and Dean Foods relationship is that Dean Foods owes DFA money and payment to DFA for anything owed before the Chapter 11 filing is pending and may never get paid in full. Dean Foods and DFA have worked hand-in-hand together on many crooked deals that resulted in screwing farmers and customers, so they've really been partners in crime and not adversaries. There are lots of court records and news stories that detail their past shady schemes.
As far as customers go, while Walmart is a behemoth there are too many regional grocery and c-store chains to name. Dean Foods shut down stores to offset any losses of Walmart and Meijer volume, the id–ts at the top just never understood that they needed to take into account the inevitable increases in distribution costs whenever a plant was shut down.
DFA is just as shady as dean's.all the plants they recently purchased were for an "undisclosed sum".maybe they thought they would buy dean's for an undisclosed sum as well lol