August saw Aurivo, Arrabawn and Tipperary Co-op all lift August milk price while the rest of the co-ops held their price.

The Aurivo move has seen it jump up into division two just under near neighbour Lakeland. LacPatrick is just under Aurivo, giving a very positive northwest feel to division two this month. One wonders how much this positioning has to do with the ongoing merger talks or where markets are for powders right now.

The August price lift means about €300 in the average August milk cheque for Aurivo suppliers and about €140 for the Tipperary Co-op suppliers.

Big players

The big players Kerry, Dairygold and Glanbia are in division three and remain over 0.3 c/kg MS (2.5 c/litre in old money) behind the West Co-ops.

I hear the talk in west Cork is that the milk price is on the way up rather than down next month.

The bottom line is the gap that was there in July remains for August. As you can see in Figure 1, if we use national average figure, the Drinagh milk cheque for August comes in at €19,799 for the average herd while Glanbia, Tipperary Co-op and Centenary Thurles are over €1,700 behind, closer to €18,000.

Remember, August is still a relatively big milk supply month for spring milk producing dairy farmers.

The average price for the main table is €4.38/kg MS, which is equivalent to about 31.2 c/litre at 3.3% protein and 3.6% fat ex VAT.

Weighted for volumes per processor (because only 5% of national milk is in west Cork) the average is probably closer to €4.28 so, in effect, the base price ex VAT at 3.3% protein and 3.6% fat is closer to 30c/litre ex VAT.