The June monthly manufacturing milk league shows most co-ops held milk price the same as what they paid out in May.

All co-ops held base price except Tipperary co-op which lifted 0.13c/kg milk solids (1c/l) as they were falling off the bottom of the league last month and had division four all to themselves.

The June move brings them up just shy of what Dairygold and Glanbia are paying out. Kerry Group and the small North Cork co-op Boherbue take up the mantle at the bottom of the league now when we compare like with like.

What did we learn? Firstly, Lakeland continues to lead base milk price over the mountain.

They stay ahead of the west Cork crew and over 0.06c/kg MS (0.5 c/l) ahead of the big players such as Glanbia and Dairygold and almost 0.13 c/kg MS (1 c/l) ahead of Kerry in the southwest.

While most co-ops held base milk price, the reality for most dairy farmers is the June milk cheque will be less.

When comparing like for like with May, the milk cheque will actually be smaller for June as fat and protein are not as good for some and milk volumes will be lower.

So while holding base price the co-ops will actually pay out less while market returns as indicated by the Ornua increase continue to rise.

Secondly, the gap between the published equivalent Ornua market returns and what the co-ops are paying has got bigger (Figure 1).

So while the Ornua price sizzles in the July sunshine it looks like the co-ops are partly holding back from matching what they get from the market even with increasing the cost allocation in the equation for calculating the equivalent Ornua market returns last year.

The third thing we learned is compared to the same month last year base payment for June is up about 15% (€4.73/kg MS in 2021 versus €4.10/kg MS in 2020).

On global markets some of the key dairy commodity prices to date this year are up between 15% and 30%.