The Competition and Markets Authority in Britain (CMA) is to launch an inquiry into the merger of two Irish dairies.

Lakeland Dairies and LacPatrick Dairies agreed to merge last October, after shareholders of the two co-operatives approved the deal.

Lakeland Dairies is based in Co Cavan, while Northern Ireland's LacPatrick Dairies is based in Co Tyrone.

The new society was to adopt the name of Lakeland Dairies.

With 3,200 suppliers, the merged co-operatives would process over 1.8 billion litres of milk annually and have annual revenues of over €1bn.

LacPatrick has 848 milk suppliers and currently processes approximately 600 million litres of milk annually.

We’ve launched our investigation into the merger of Lakeland Dairies (N.I.) Limited and LacPatrick Dairies Co-operative Society Limited.

Find out more: https://t.co/4U5oRsp6TU pic.twitter.com/KmETIHclO7

— Competition & Markets Authority (@CMAgovUK) January 16, 2019

Lakeland is a farmer-owned dairy processing co-operative with operations across 15 counties on a cross-border basis.

It collects and processes over 1.2 billion litres of locally produced milk from 2,500 milk suppliers each year.

It is also an international supplier of dairy ingredients and foodservice products - marketing and distributing 240 different dairy products in over 80 countries worldwide.

But the CMA said it is considering whether the transaction could result in a lack of competition within any market.

It has set a provisional deadline for a phase one decision of March 13th.

Lakeland Dairies has said it intends to be "fully compliant" with all regulatory considerations relating to the proposed merger.

It added that it looks forward to matters progressing in due course.