Global Dairy Trade (GDT) has published its Annual Report for 2018, coinciding with its 10 year anniversary.
The new report doubles as a re-cap of the last 10 years of the GDT auction, which has now traded seven million megatonnes (MT) of products worth US$24 billion (€21.2 billion) across 226 trading events, according to the report.
It goes on to say that the GDT auction has supplied dairy products to buyers across 88 countries since it was established in July 2018.
The report, which can be read on the GDT website, also highlighted that a “major refresh” of the ‘GDT Events’ auction platform is expected to be complete by the middle of 2019.
Furthermore, the report says that ‘GDT Marketplace’ now has more than 400 registered buyers, 15 sellers, and has completed in excess of 8,500 listings across a range of products.
Data is continuing to play a bigger part in GDT, according to the report, with increased information being provided at auction in 2018.
For, example, regional breakdowns for the total quantities in each product group were included in the auctions throughout 2018.
GDT also continued to explore the possibility of an auction mechanism for European dairy commodities.
The report says that “market sounding activities” in 2018 showed positive feedback from “potential participants” for a European auction; GDT will take further steps on this initiative in 2019.
Looking at some of the figures for 2018 alone, there were 71 different product specifications offered on the marketplace last year, across 19 product groups.
The most transacted product group in 2018 was skimmed milk powder, which accounted for almost 20% of all transactions.
Butter and whole milk powder accounted for the next most transacted product groups, each making up over 10% of total transactions.
The report also shows the locations of buyers; 27% are located in south-east Asia and Oceania, the highest proportion of any region.
North Asia is currently home to 23% of buyers, while Europe and Asia are each the location of 12% of buyers.
“Through our first decade, we have progressively won the support of buyers, sellers and market commentators, earning our place as a trusted source of market-based reference prices and market-informing data,” said Eric Hansen, director of GDT.
He added: “Over the next decade, we will continue to evolve in line with our purpose to help buyers and sellers to trade with confidence in global and local dairy markets.”
