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Total annual milk supply for 2020 in the Republic is likely to comfortably exceed 8bn litres when the last milk of the year is collected in the next week. An Irish Farmers Journal survey of individual milk processors to the end of December shows the estimated year-to-date percentage increase in milk supply over and above 2019.
The simple average shows an increase of 4.5%. However, this varies from 6% in the west and northwest to 2.5% for two big players in the south, Dairygold and Kerry (Table 1).
CSO statistics show a total of 7,989.6bn litres for last year (2019).
Estimates
If the survey estimates are correct, there will have been another 300m litres produced on top of this, bringing total national supply close to 8.3bn litres for 2020. The latest CSO published figures up to October show 7,595bn litres delivered.
In Northern Ireland, Department of Agriculture statistics indicate that 1.88bn litres has been produced in the first nine months of 2020, an increase of 1.8% on the same period in 2019.
Assuming that percentage increase has continued for the remainder of 2020, it would leave total production for 2020 at just over 2.43bn litres. It brings total island of Ireland milk production to over 10.7bn litres in 2020.
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