Gouda cheese and whey powder slightly weaker priced

The price decreases for the cheeses and whey mentioned put a temporary end to an unprecedented series of price increases. The exact cause is not entirely clear. There is slowly a slightly larger milk supply, but there are no stocks anywhere yet and essentially the market remains demand-driven. Retailers and other customers are sputtering at the increasingly higher prices that have to be paid, but for the time being there seems to be little choice for them.

On the powder market, prices for skimmed milk powders in particular continued to rise, although traders report that prices are increasing more slowly. At some point a peak may also have been reached. This week this was not yet the case for lean, full and fat-filled powder.

The whey powders were a different story. It had to give up some ground. Feed buyers will certainly breathe a sigh of relief, provided the downward trend continues. For them, prices have risen almost to an unaffordable level.

But even whey concentrate has been extremely expensive in recent weeks and months and relatively little cheaper than whey powder. In other years this difference is often greater, due to a smaller demand for specialty products made from whey and/or due to a shortage of drying capacity. This time it was different and the high demand for thick-liquid whey was driven by a greater need for the higher whey ingredients - the WPCs and WPIs.