At a meeting this Thursday, experts from the European Commission and EU member states opened the bids received for the 22,150t of SMP put on the market for the first time since the past year’s milk price crisis.

The expert committee accepted bids for only 40t of SMP at prices ranging between €2,150/t and €2,200/t, a European Commission spokesperson told the Irish Farmers Journal.

Half of the product sold was stored in Germany and the other half in the UK.

Lower offers not accepted

“We received offers at much lower prices, which were not accepted,” the spokesperson added.

SMP is currently trading at €2,010/t on average in the EU and €2,470 on the New Zealand-based Global Dairy Trade (GDT) auction platform. The SMP placed into EU intervention was bought at a price of €1,698/t.

European Commission officials have repeatedly stated that they would only accept bids for intervention stocks at prices that would not destabilise markets. Tenders will open again twice a month from January until the 22,110t remaining on offer are sold. This represents just over 6% of the 352,951t currently in storage.

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