Both Glanbia and Lakeland Dairies have announced their milk prices for February supplies recently.
Glanbia Ingredients Ireland (GII) has decided to hold its base price for February at 31c/L, including VAT, for manufacturing milk at 3.6% fat and 3.3% protein.
Glanbia suppliers will continue to be paid 31c/L, following a 1c/L increase by the processor for January supplies.
The board will continue to monitor dairy markets on a monthly basis, Glanbia Chairman, Henry Corbally, said.
Lakeland Dairies also decided to hold its price for February supplies, at 31.28c/L including VAT.
This follows on from the processor’s decision to increase its January price by 1c/L.
Meanwhile, the Ornua Purchase Price Index (PPI) for February remained unchanged from January, at 105.4 percentage points.
This is the equivalent of 31.4c/L, VAT inclusive, based on Ornua’s product purchase mix and assumed costs of 6.5p/L.
Ornua has said that the February PPI reflected lower skimmed milk powder (SMP) and butter returns in the month, offset by higher cheese and whey power prices.
The PPI is a monthly indicator of market returns on dairy products purchased by Ornua (typically butter, cheese, whole milk powder and protein products), relative to comparable returns generated in a base year (2010).
Prices continue to fall at the latest GDT auction
At the latest Global Dairy Trade auction prices dropped by 6.3%. The drop came after a decrease in prices at the last auction of 3.2%.
The main driver of the fall in prices was skimmed milk powder (SMP) with prices dropping 15.5% at the latest auction, while whole milk powder (WMP) prices also suffered a decrease of 12.4%.
Cheddar, lactose and rennet casein all registered falls at the most recent GDTÂ event.
The only products that saw price increases were butter (1.2%) and butter milk powder (8.4%).
Analysts at ASB Bank in New Zealand had hinted that WMP prices could fall by 10%, with rain and higher New Zealand milk production putting a dampener on prices.
