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The Ornua Purchase Price Index (PPI) has remained almost unchanged into the first month of 2019, moving up marginally by 0.1 to 107.6.
This equivalent to a farmgate price of 30.6c/l (excl VAT and assuming 6.5c/l processing costs).
Intervention sale
Meanwhile, the European Commission has further emptied skim milk powder (SMP) intervention stores with 584t sold in the latest tender.
This leaves just half a percent of peak intervention stock in store, with the vast amount of that now in Spain. All Irish SMP intervention stocks have been cleared.
The minimum price secured at the tender also increased up from €1,585/t last month to €1,622/t which reflects a recovering global dairy protein markets.
Conor Mulvihill, director of Dairy Industry Ireland (DII) welcomed the clearance of intervention stock by the EU in an orderly manner.
He said that the almost 400,000t of stock had served as an albatross around the neck of the global dairy protein market.
However, Mulvihill warned that despite the optimism, current intervention disposal prices only equated to a milk equivalent price of under 20c/litre.
This, he said, meant the market had some way to go in terms of delivering proper returns for Irish farmers and industry.
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