No country offered skimmed milk powder (SMP) into intervention for the week ending November 15, 2015, figures from the Milk Market Observatory (MMO) show.
This is the first time since July that no product has been offered to the measure.
Of the nine countries offering product to intervention, only France has been offering SMP to the measure since mid-October.
Cumulatively, there has been 23,638t of SMP offered to intervention. Ireland has offered a total of 1,967t SMP to the measure.
The amounts offered have been decreasing since the first week of October, with 417t offered to the measure for the week ending October 18, 2015.
Ireland hasn’t used intervention since the week ending October 4, when 72t of SMP was offered.
Private Storage Aid
Total quantities of SMP offered to private storage aid (PSA) for the week ending November 15, stood at 54,060t.
There was a total of 559t offered to the measure by three countries; Lithuania, The Netherlands and the UK.
Ireland hasn’t offered SMP to PSA since the week ending September 13, when Ireland offered 634t to the measure.
A total of 7,258t has been offered to PSA from Ireland so far.
To date, a total of 156,284t of butter has been offered to PSA from the 10 countries using the measure.
Global milk production has started to slow
Milk production in the five key exporting regions, the EU, US, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina is slowing down, according to AHDB Dairy.
It states that this is the first meaningful reduction for two and a half years.
New Zealand has recorded the biggest reduction, down 7.5% on September last year, according to the organisation.
Volumes did decline temporarily in late 2014/early 2015, which AHDB attributes to a number of EU countries holding production back due to quota restrictions.
