Ireland last week offered dairy product into intervention for the first time since early October.
According to statistics from the Milk Market Observatory, Ireland offered 170t of Skimmed Milk Powder to EU public intervention last week.
Dairy product prices continue to be at low levels both on European and world markets. This week many Irish dairy co-ops held their base milk prices at in the region of 25c/L.
Since it first used the mechanism in September of 2015 Ireland has now offered over 2,000t of Skimmed Milk Powder to public intervention.
Last week the use of intervention by EU member states almost doubled to over 6,300t.
There has been a significant increase in the last three weeks of European countries selling milk powder into public intervention, according to latest figures from the Milk Market Observatory (MMO).
Back in early July 2015, Lithuania became the first country to use public intervention following the latest downturn in dairy prices.
Over the next few months, it was joined by a host of EU Member States including Ireland in using the instrument.
The first week of September saw the use of the measure peak with over 3,000t of skimmed milk powder (SMP) sold into intervention in that week.
Through late September and October, the use of pubic intervention by Member States had been declining significantly cumulating in no product being sold under the measure by early November.
The fall in the use of intervention at the time coincided with somewhat of a pick up in dairy markets.
However, more recently the use of public intervention for skimmed milk powder by Member States has ramped up again.
Last week saw the highest amount of product offered to public intervention in the last 12 months (6300t). Offer quantities were also high in the latter weeks of December 2015 with in excess of 3000t a week also offered.