Dairy market in a lively mood during the holiday season

This week, skimmed milk powder was one of the few products that became cheaper again, together with concentrate. For the rest, almost all prices rose, the most for butter. But it wasn't exactly planned that way. The price of butter had only just taken a significant dip and now the price went up again almost as fast. This was probably some kind of GDT effect. Earlier this week, butter prices at the GDT auction rose sharply, against many expectations, especially in New Zealand itself. No one could have missed this in Europe, even though the market was moving in the opposite direction. So there was a kind bounce place.

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In Europe there was and is perhaps understandable resistance to high butter prices, especially at retail. Moreover, there is also a strong speculative element in the butter trade. These two factors introduced an element of additional doubt into the EU butter market, putting pressure on prices until Tuesday, but the GDT auction once again indicated that real tightness does exist. This is also evident in Europe from requests from producers to deliver later.
The result of all this was that prices at the top may not have changed that much, but those at the bottom did. As a result, the quotation ultimately rose sharply.

Cream slowed down a bit, but the cream price did not drop as much as the butter price last week. Moreover, the spread in prices was less wide.

Skimmed milk concentrate actually fell slightly in price, even though market parties reported that prices were on the rise again towards the end of the week. Liquid dairy has suffered some factory disruptions and a strike in Greece in the past week, resulting in less liquid product going to the South. The strike is now over and it is said that there is now extra demand.

The concentrate market could use this, because the market for skimmed milk powder is weak. According to various parties, this is even unnecessarily weak, because exports are reasonably good at current prices. There is also not a lot of competitive supply from elsewhere in the world. However, there is still a fair amount of competitive supply from old stocks.

The whey powder price is slightly stronger than it was, but not yet climbing strongly. The quotation for whole milk powder is largely stable.

According to the DCA quotation, most cheese prices are slightly on the rise, despite signals from the market that price formation is somewhat more difficult and that lower sales prices are also being achieved. There is a possibility that this will become clearer in the coming weeks, but for the time being the quotation shows a plus, especially for foil cheese and Cheddar.

Mozzarella is having a slightly harder time, but the price of this type of cheese has already increased considerably in recent weeks, which has also resulted in a strong recovery in returns.