The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Assocation (ICMSA) has said that it is “confident” that there will be a milk price rise for October supplies.
Chairperson of the ICMSA Dairy Committee, Gerald Quain said that the next round of price announcements scheduled for the end of the first week of November, will see a rise in the prices paid to Irish milk suppliers.
He added that the international demand for dairy products was solid, and when set against declining supply figures, was moving prices up significantly as could be seen with the latest Dutch quotes.
Fonterra
Quain cited Fonterra’s decision announced this week to settle on a $8.40/kg of milk solids (ms), as the price to be paid to its member suppliers.
He said that this is the joint highest price that the New Zealand giant has ever paid to its member suppliers, and comes as US production slows down due to the increases in feed costs.
He added that Fonterra had weighed-up all the contingent factors and was still able to settle on a price range only achieved once before. The ICMSA said that it does not see any grounds for assuming that Irish co-ops could not arrive at the same conclusion.
“We expect the Irish co-ops to look at the same market as Fonterra and come to the same conclusions as Fonterra did,” Quain stated.
“We also expect the Irish co-ops to move up their price to member suppliers in the same way as Fonterra and we would remind the co-ops – not that we need to because they’ll know this from their own stores operations – that dairy inputs are already eating through these milk prices.
“This is not a case of extra profit for the farmers; this is a case of using the increased milk price to try and offset the increased input costs,” Quain added.
“ICMSA confidently expects all co-ops to rise their farmer milk price in line with international markets, and pay the corresponding price for milk supplied this month and milk price should now be in the region of 40c/L.