Only farmers to be affected by milk cost cuts at retailers - ICMSA
The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association (ICMSA) has said it is "extremely notable" that the only people who will see their margins affected by cuts to milk price by retailers are dairy farmers.
Several retailers have moved in recent days to announce reductions to the cost of milk in their stores.
These announcements began with Lidl and Aldi, with Tesco and most recently SuperValu also confirming they will cut prices.
SuperValu has confirmed that it has reduced the price of 2L of its own-brand milk to €2.35, with pro-rate reductions across all its own-brand milk.
The retailer said that it continues to invest heavily in its own-brand range.
Tesco, meanwhile, said: "While cost pressures remain across the supply chain, we’re committed to keeping prices affordable and helping households to manage their weekly shop, without compromising on quality or our support for Irish suppliers."
Commenting on this run of announcements from retailers, ICMSA president Denis Drennan said: "When the markets are going up, every element of the supply chain makes their margins. When the markets are going down, as at present, the only element in the dairy supply chain that loses financially are the dairy farmers.
"The economic and compulsory environmental costs to produce a litre of milk are the same, but the price the farmer receives has fallen in the last two months," he added.
"There's no other sector that can and does experience this kind of precipitous fall in income and it's exactly this kind of income volatility that is cited by the next generation as the single biggest obstacle to them going into farming.
"The government had a chance to incorporate a measure to deal with it last week in [Budget 2026] but, yet again, decided to ignore the problem," Drennan commented.
The ICMSA president said that farmers' margins are "an open book" and freely available for anyone to ascertain, claiming that the margins of retailers "seem a much murkier matter".
"The [Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon] must give the Agri-Food Regulator the necessary powers to publicly state who is getting what, and how," Drennan added.
"Farmers work for 365 days a year to produce milk for the consumer and it takes the retailer two hours in a fridge to sell it. There seems to be an unbelievably lop-sided 'divvy up' of the margins.
"Farmers are up against it again and will not be able to take another fall in their prices or income," the farm leader said.
