Germany is the latest EU28 country to put dairy product into intervention – the latest figures from Europe show.
Germany joins Belgium, Lithuania, Poland and the UK in putting dairy product – skimmed milk powder (SMP) into intervention this year. Germany put in 264t between August 17-23.
However, the UK and Lithuania did not submit any SMP into intervention during the past week. Belgium, on the other hand, increased by more than three fold the amount it submitted. It went from offering 480t to 1,581t.
In total, 2,251t of SMP was offered into intervention in the week August 17-23, bringing it to a total of 8,859t this week.
No butter was offered to intervention storage during the week, but 6,679t (138,510t for the year to date) was offered into private storage.
Ireland’s offering of butter into private storage more than tripled – from 530t to 1,820t from August 10-16 to August 17-23. Ireland was one of six countries to offer butter into private storage for the week, and one of 10 countries to put butter into private storage since the beginning of the year.
Ireland also put SMP into private storage during the week – 195t down from 250t the previous week.
Meanwhile, the European Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan has said he does not want to increase the price of intervention (currently at 21c/L) but has not ruled it out.
He is due to make a number of announcements on September 7 at the Council of Agriculture Ministers meeting in Brussels in relation to support structures for the dairy sector.
