Last week Ireland offered 1,769t of skimmed milk powder (SMP) into public intervention, the highest amount offered by a country to the measure last week.

This now brings Ireland’s total amount of SMP in the measure to 3,273t for 2016, figures from the Milk Market Observatory (MMO) show.

Ireland began offering product back into the measure in January when it offered 170t of SMP to the intervention and it has steadily continued to offer product since then.

This week, however saw the amount offered to the measure increase significantly.

In total some 5,749t was offered to the measure last week from the eight countries that offered SMP to intervention.

So far this year, 22,515t of dairy product has been offered to the measure.

Last year, EU Member States offered over 40,000t of SMP to intervention last year latest figures from the MMO show.

Meanwhile, looking closer to home, Irish dairy processors have increased their production of SMP by 146% in three years, according to the most recent figures from the CSO.

The figures show that last year Irish production of SMP totalled 121,000t up from 70,000t in 2014 and less than 50,000t in 2013.

The increase in the production of SMP last year coincided with a 13% increase in Irish milk supplies along with historically low prices for the product.

Looking at EU-level, the latest data from the MMO shows that EU SMP production was running over 8% ahead of 2014 up to November.

EU INTERVENTION MILK MARKET OBSERVATORY SMP