As we enter the final weeks of 2020, we now have a good picture of milk supply trends across the main dairy producing countries in Europe.

In the Netherlands, one of the largest dairy producing and exporting members of the EU, milk production started off very strongly in the first half of 2020, but the pace of growth has slowed in the back half of the year.

For the month of November, Dutch milk production stood at just less than 1.1bn litres, which was relatively flat (+0.4%) when compared to the same month last year. This brings Dutch milk supplies for the first 11 months of 2020 to a cumulative 12.4bn litres, which is 1.4%, or 165m litres, ahead of the same period last year.

It looks likely that Dutch milk production will come close to 13.5bn litres for the whole of 2020, which would be the highest level of milk production in the Netherlands since 2017.