In the prices paid to 1m-litre suppliers in April 2026, Tirlán / Fivemiletown continue to lead across high, average and low solids milk (see Table B).

The parameters for each of the three milk qualities are as shown in Table 1 on the opposite page, with those qualities adjusted each month in line with the actual milk solids reported to us by each company. With April milk quality very similar to that from March, the only change sees butterfat drop by 0.01 percentage point.

For high solids milk at 4.53% butterfat and 3.50% protein, Tirlán paid a leading price of 36.51p/l, which is over 1p/l ahead of Dale Farm in second.

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The only positional changes in April when compared to March sees Dale Farm overtake Aurivo, with the west of Ireland based co-op dropping to third across all three milk qualities.

That is partly due to a greater increase in base price at Dale Farm for April milk, but also because of its new payment increments in place from 1 April, which effectively add 0.33p/l onto the price paid for high solids and 0.23p/l onto price for average solids milk. For low solids milk, with butterfat and protein both above the Dale Farm base litre, the new increments increase the price paid by 0.12p/l.

Behind the top three, Leprino is in fourth and around 1p/l ahead of both Lakeland and Strathroy at the foot of the table.

Rolling prices

Shown in Table C are the rolling average prices paid by each processor to 1m-litre suppliers across high, average and low solids milk over the period from May 2025 to April 2026.

For average quality milk, Tirlán has widened out the gap to Dale Farm from 0.28p/l in our March league to now sit at 0.43p/l.

It also continues to increase the gap in price paid to NI’s largest processor, Lakeland Dairies, which now stands at 1.9p/l for average quality milk.