The August milk league shows a similar story to the July league, except a few of the processors in the lower divisions have actually dropped down further. Of the big players, the west Cork Co-ops, Kerry and Tipperary Co-op all held the July price for August (as per league table).

Centenary Thurles were mixing it in Division 2 for the last two months but they were paying a bonus to those who had signed a contract for June and July and that’s gone now. They have dropped price from €3.64/kg MS down to €3.45/kg MS for August.

The other Tipperary player, Arrabawn, dropped from €3.51 to €3.45/kg MS. Glanbia dropped down its top-up for August milk and also I was including the top-up at 1 c/litre thinking VAT was on top but it was actually 0.95 c/litre excl VAT so I’ve corrected that this month.

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The group of northwestern co-ops – Lakeland, Monaghan and Aurivo – all dropped price for August. Effectively that drops them all to the bottom of the league, with Aurivo taking over the very bottom position of the league from Dairygold, who were rock bottom in July.

If you were to summarise the August league, you have all the west Cork Co-ops at the top, Kerry and Tipperary best of the rest, and then there’s little between the processors at the bottom.

I suppose the game has moved on since August already and this week we hear of some processors setting September milk prices.

Carbery announced it would hold price for September, but the mood music from west Cork is that the cheese market suggests a 2 c/litre drop was justified, but, the Carbery board have decided another arm of the Carbery business (Synergy) can prop up the September price.

The four individual co-ops must now decide what they will do.

The other big players –Kerry, Arrabawn, Aurivo and Dairygold – have announced they will all hold August price for September.

Of the big players, Glanbia are the odd ones out and they decided to cut September base price by 1 c/litre, much to the disappointment of many of their suppliers. This effectively means that, for September, Glanbia will be rock bottom, holding hands with Aurivo to keep farmers at bay.

Difference

Figure 1 shows the difference in payout (based on a farmer supplying 11% of 300,000 litres) between processors depending on payment if all processors were processing milk of 3.43% protein and 3.99% fat.

It shows the difference in the milk cheque for a supplier with a normal seasonal spring supply curve (11% in August) for a farm that will produce 300,000 litres (66,000 gallons) in the year. You can see this month there is almost €1,250 of a difference in the August milk cheque between the processor paying top price for August and Aurivo who are paying the lowest price.

Figure 2 shows the difference in payout between processors using the average percentage milk solids that the processor collected from their suppliers in August – ie the actual average processor solids.

There are no conditional bonuses included in this graph. If your milk qualifies for a conditional bonus from your processor, the price you receive will be higher than shown on the graph.