Dutch milk production for December stood at 1.1bn litres, which was down more than 6% on the same month last year.

This brings cumulative milk production in the Netherlands for all of 2018 to 13.4bn litres, which is a drop in production of 3% compared with the previous year.

US beef exports for November and December are estimated at 88,000t and 87,000t respectively.

This brings total beef exports from the US for 2018 to a cumulative 1.05m tonnes, which is a 10% increase on the 950,000t exported by US meat companies in 2017.

The International Grains Council (IGC) has pegged the 2018/19 soya bean crop at 363m tonnes, which would be a new record and some 20m tonnes ahead of last season’s soya bean harvest. Brazil is driving much of this growth, with another bumper harvest forecast this season.

Chinese dairy imports for 2018 stood at 2.8m tonnes, which represents an 8% increase on 2017 dairy imports.

The healthy growth in import demand was driven by a 10% increase in infant formula imports to just over 333,000t and an 11% increase in WMP imports to 521,000t.