Dairy market declines slightly as supply increases

In the Benelux and Germany, this offer has not yet had a major effect on the quotations for concentrate and cream.

Irish concentrate and also Irish spot milk are available for very low prices, market parties report. Spot milk is available from €10 per 100 kilos, skimmed milk concentrate from €900 to €1.000 per ton. However, the distance and especially the transport time make it a challenge to get high-quality product to Belgium or the Netherlands, for example.

The spot milk market in the Netherlands and Germany also got an extra push down this week. Here the pressure is somewhat more noticeable than with the semi-finished products.

Although the cream price is slightly lower this week than last week, the milk fat market is still quite stable.

The DCA butter quotation is unchanged, the futures market quotation even went up a bit. The quotation for butter oil is also virtually unchanged.

The milk powder market is slightly in the red, mainly due to the difficult export. This is suffering a lot from the sharply depreciated US dollar and the continuing uncertainty about the exchange rates. It is extra difficult when exports have to be converted twice: from euro to dollar and from dollar to local currency and vice versa (dairy products are usually paid for in dollars on the world market).

The whey powder market shows two faces. The listing for whey powder feed drops slightly, the listing for whey powder food rises, but not as much as that of lactose.

The listing of this product continues its advance unabated due to the tariff war between the US and China. The latter country is importing less whey products, lactose and also permeate from the US and is partly looking for alternatives in Europe. The Chinese demand is so strong that regular buyers of lactose and also permeate have to give way to Chinese buyers, because they offer much more for the product. Lactose is sold for prices of up to €1.500 per tonne and reportedly even more.

The price of whey concentrate, on the other hand, continues to fall. This is due to a large supply and yet too limited processing capacity. WPC-80 is now sold for prices starting at €11.000 to €12.000 per ton. Whey powder isolates are even sold for €22.000 and more.
The cheesemaker who produces cheese and can process whey into high-quality powder therefore gets a very good margin from his milk.

The cheese market itself is currently under slight pressure across the board, which is not surprising given the increasing milk supply.