Milk production in New Zealand for the 2019/20 milking season looks on course to be pretty flat or even down on last year.

The latest figures from New Zealand show that milk production there for the month of November came in at 2.9bn litres, which is flat when compared with the same month last year.

This brings New Zealand milk production for the first six months of the 2019/20 season, which runs from June 2019 to May 2020, to a cumulative 10.4bn litres, which is down slightly (-0.4%) on the same period in 2018.

New Zealand is now past its peak month for milk production, which is October. Milk production for October came in at 3.1bn litres, which was down almost 3%, or 85m litres, on the same month a year previous.

Milk supply volumes

There’s still a long way to go in the New Zealand milking season, but milk supply volumes will begin to slow dramatically after January.

Right now, it looks as if New Zealand is on track to produce in or around 21bn litres of milk for its entire 2019/20 milking season, which would be in line with the previous season.

This restrained output in New Zealand, coupled with strong demand from Asia, is underpinning the healthy outlook for dairy markets in 2020.