Having seen a range in prices paid to 1m litre suppliers of 6p/l in our February league, the gap from top to bottom in our March analysis has reduced to 4p/l.

Shown in Table B is the final price paid to 1m litre suppliers by each processor across three different milk qualities highlighted in Table 1 on the opposite page.

Tirlán / Fivemiletown dominates across all three milk qualities and for high solids milk it is still paying over 36p/l. At the SCC and TBC figures used in our analysis, there is a premium quality bonus of 0.3p/l paid on all Tirlán milk.

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Aurivo sits in second across high, average and low solids milk, having been placed fourth in the previous month. The co-op is just ahead of Dale Farm in third, mainly thanks to the bonus of 0.35p/l it pays for milk below an SCC of 200 and at or below a TBC of 15.

Leprino is in fourth and ahead of Lakeland in fifth due to its volume bonus of 0.65p/l for 1m litre suppliers.

All three milk qualities also meet the requirements for the Leprino 0.75p/l mozzarella payment.

Rolling averages

As shown in Table C, there are no positional changes compared to the February league in the rolling average prices paid by each processor over the last 12 months.

Those rolling prices cover the period from April 2025 to March 2026. With prices trending downwards in recent months, averages continue to fall and they have dropped by slightly over 1p/l when compared to our February league.

For average quality milk, only Tirlán and Dale Farm have now paid rolling prices of over 40p/l. The gap between the two has closed thanks to Dale Farm’s 13th payment of 1p/l paid with the March milk cheque.