The auction took place this afternoon and saw a 3.5% decrease in prices. This comes on the back of 3.6%, 10.6% and 8.8% drops over the previous three GDT auctions.

Outside of cheddar which saw prices climb 9% to $3,012/tonne, all other dairy products saw price falls.

The largest price fall came for butter milk powder which was down 14% to $1,748/tonne. Rennet casein was down 11% to $6,094/tonne.

Prices for skim milk powder were down 7.5% to $2,048/tonne. The price for the most important product for New Zealand, whole milk powder (WMP), was down 1.8% and now stands at $2,386/tonne.

After this latest auction, the GDT index now stands at 730. The last time the GDT index was below 730 was in August 2009.

There were a total of 144 participants in the auction, down from 154 two weeks ago and 27,369 metric tonnes of product was traded compared with 25,596 metric tonnes of traded product two weeks ago.