Following a poor run of results in recent months, the Global Dairy Trade (GDT) has recorded a positive start to 2026.

The first GDT auction of the new year took place today (Tuesday, January 6), resulting in the price index increasing by 6.3% to 1,072 - up from 1,008 after the final trading event of last year.

Today's result marks a step change following nine consecutive falls in the GDT index since last August.

The GDT auction, which is held twice in every month, is a trading platform for core dairy products.

GDT

There were a total of 177 bidders taking part in the inital trading event of year, which saw 29,282 metric tonne (mt) of product sold, compared to 33,974mt in the previous trading event.

The average selling price was €3,533/mt in the auction, which lasted for nearly three hours, during which there were 114 winning bidders and 26 bidding rounds.

The event saw increases in the average prices of all dairy commodities offered for sale.

Today's results show a 7.4% jump in the weighted average price of anhydrous milk fat to €6,011/mt.

There was a 7.2% rise in the price of whole milk powder (WMP) to $3,407/mt, while skim milk powder (SMP) was up 5.4% to $2,564/mt.

Butter recorded a 3.8% increase resulting in a price of $5,206/mt and butter milk powder (BMP) jumped by 5.1% to $3,027/mt.

There were marginal gains for cheese with mozzarella up 0.7% to $3,418/mt and cheddar up 0.6% to $4,665/mt.