Kerry will be holding its price for December milk supplies at 29c/L including VAT, a spokesperson has confirmed to Agriland.

Supply volumes for December were low and Kerry has decided to hold the price at 29c/L after several months of increases, the spokesperson said.

Farmers supplying Dairygold will receive a base milk price of 30.5c/L, following an increase of 1.5c/L, for December supplies.

Yesterday, Arrabawn Co-op increased milk price by 1c/L for December supplies, bringing the base milk price to 30.75c/L for December.

Meanwhile, Glanbia announced last week that it will pay its suppliers 30c/L including VAT for December manufacturing milk supplies.

Glanbia Ingredients Ireland (GII) has increased its base price for December by 1c/L to 30c/L including VAT for manufacturing milk at 3.6% fat and 3.3% protein.

In light of this decision, there will be no Glanbia Co-operative Society support payment to members this month.

Glanbia Chairman Henry Corbally said that the strong recovery in Glanbia’s milk price in the past six months has resulted in a positive conclusion to a very challenging year for the dairy sector.

Last week, Lakeland increased the milk price paid for December supplies to 30.28c/L including VAT.

The decision to increase the December price by 1c/L follows on from last month’s decision to increase the November milk price by 2c/L to over 29c/L including VAT.

Milk production in November was ahead of 2015 levels

Meanwhile, the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that domestic milk intake by creameries and pasteurisers was 0.5% above the corresponding milk production figure last year.

Milk intake was estimated at 349.7m litres for November 2016 by the CSO.

Comparing the November 2016 milk production figures with those for November 2015 shows that total milk sold for human consumption increased by 5% to 43.8m litres. The figures show that butter production was down 0.4% to 12,490t.