First Milk will hold its milk price for December at 28.5 pence per litre (ppl), it was announced earlier this week.

This price applies to the liquid standard litre (4% butterfat and 3.3% protein) and it equates to 29.47ppl on a manufacturing standard litre (4.2% butterfat and 3.4% protein) price.

First Milk vice chairman and farmer director Jim Baird said: “The dairy commodity markets have weakened significantly in recent weeks and this puts pressure on milk prices.

“Of course, we are not immune from this, but our underlying business performance remains in line with our plans, which has allowed us to hold prices for December, and we aim to provide as much milk price stability to our members as we can moving forward.”

NFU Scotland’s Milk Committee chairman John Smith added: “Winter feed for dairy cows is now up to £260/t. For most producers, that means that the price they are receiving for a litre of milk is almost the same as the price they are having to pay for a kilo of feeding.”

John added that the “much more competitive” milk price from First Milk was a “just reward for members who remained loyal to the co-op through very tough trading conditions over the past few years”.

Skimmed milk powder

Half of all the skimmed milk powder (SMP) bought into public stock since 2015 has now been sold back onto the market, according to recent figures from the European Commission.

Intervention stocks were used between 2015 and 2017 to remove surpluses and from the end of 2016, the Commission began putting these stocks back on the market through public tenders.

Following the latest tender on 8 November where over 30,000t was sold, there remains just 190,000t out of the original 380,000t.

After strong production growth in the first half of the year, cumulative EU milk production for the whole year is projected to end in a 0.8% increase.