Farmers supplying Dutch dairy FrieslandCampina were paid a total of €14.1m for limiting their milk supply between January 1 and February 11 this year.
FrieslandCampina paid its member dairy farmers a ‘bonus’ of €2.00/kg if they limited supply within this time period.
The temporary measure resulted in a reduction of the milk supply of a total of about 35m kg of milk in the past six weeks.
There was insufficient processing capacity available at the dairy due to a stronger growth in milk supply than FrieslandCampina expected, thus, the measure was needed.
Some 60% of member dairy farmers participated in the arrangement.
Because of the temporary measure, combined with a number of other measures, FrieslandCampina was able to buy all the milk from the member dairy farmers during the past six weeks.
FreislandCampina said that this was with the exception a period of black ice in the north of the Netherlands.
It went on to say that now it has sufficient capacity again to collect all the raw milk, because extra processing capacity has been made available within and outside FrieslandCampina.
However, expectations are that the processing capacity will remain tight until the summer.
Meanwhile, the dairy announced that it is to develop new infant nutrition ingredients in a global partnership with US-based Glycosyn.
Both parties signed a technology and partnership agreement.
Glycosyn has developed a patented technology for the production of oligosaccharides from lactose. The partnership will produce and introduce these new ingredients onto the global market.
