Following six successive increases at the Global Dairy Trade (GDT) auctions, prices were sent tumbling on Tuesday afternoon. The overall price was down 8.8%. The sharp fall comes off the back of 1.1% increase two weeks ago and 10.1% increase in the auction four weeks ago.

All dairy products which were offered at the auction suffered price falls.

The price for the most important product for New Zealand, whole milk powder (WMP), was down 9.6% and now stands at $2,928/tonne. Butter prices were down 9.4% to $3,555/tonne and cheddar prices were down 7.4% to $3,130/tonne while the largest price drop was seen for Rennet Casein which fell 15.2% to $7,507/tonne.

After this latest auction, the GDT index now stands at 880 and the index is on par with the auction of 5 August 2014.

There were a total of 134 participants in the auction, down from 160 two weeks ago and 20,258 metric tonnes of product was traded compared with 22,094 metric tonnes of traded product two weeks ago.