Milk production on dairy farms in the UK continues to fall as the poor farm gate prices continue to eat into farmers’ margins.
According to the AHDB, UK daily deliveries for the two weeks ending June 25 averaged 39.4m litres/day, 4.0m litres/day (9.1%) lower than the same period last year.
Daily deliveries for this period were 1.8m (4.3%) lower compared with the 3-year average.
Milk production in Britain for May has been estimated by AHDB at 1.116m litres, a decrease of 3.2% compared to May of last year.
AHDB Dairy has attributed several factors to the dampened milk production, such as above-average rainfall, low spring temperatures and ongoing low farmgate prices.
New figures from Europe on milk production for April show the EU-28 produced 437m litres of milk per day in the month.
This was 5m litres per day more than April last year, although that only equates to a year-on-year increase of 1.1%. Between October 2015 and March 2016, the EU-28 was running 5% up on the previous year.
Breaking the data down by country shows that milk production continued to increase in Germany and Netherlands, but fell in the UK, France and Ireland.
Domestic milk intake by Irish creameries and pasteurisers was estimated at 918.0m litres for May 2016, according to the latest figures on milk production from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
This is a 4.9% increase in volumes above the corresponding figure for milk production for May 2015.
The latest figures from the CSO also show that from January to May this year, milk intake by the processors stood at 2,715.2 billion litres.
Compared to January to May last year, this is an increase of 11.1%.
Skimmed milk powder (SMP) production also increased on May 2015 levels, from 16,600t to 20,500t.
