Over €30m of winter milk price premiums will be paid out for milk supplied over the winter months. Volumes in winter milk schemes from each of the processors have increased slightly in recent years.

As you can see from Table 1, most of the southern processors have between 9% and 14% of their total manufacturing pool involved in a winter milk supply arrangement (November to January), not liquid milk.

This milk attracts a premium over base manufacturing price for some processors.

Last year, Glanbia moved to paying a premium for winter milk from November to February. There are preconditions such as supplying 20% of annual supply over those four months, and a minimum of 3% in a month. The Glanbia premium is 8.5c/l above base price.

The Carbery (four west Cork co-ops) winter milk scheme is spread over five months (October to February) inclusive.

The winter premium varies from 3.2 c/l to 7.26 c/l depending on the month.

Lakeland has a winter scheme where the target is to supply a percentage of your monthly May supply over the four months of November to February inclusive.

The target is to supply 50% of your May supply for the month of November (3 c/l bonus), and 45% of your May supply each month for December to February (5c/l bonus).

Dairygold operates a winter milk scheme confined to a small number of suppliers. The scheme pays a bonus of 5.6c/l to suppliers.

Kerry has no winter bonus structure. The Arrabawn liquid milk scheme covers off most of the Arrabawn winter requirement so, as such, it has no winter scheme.

Also, Aurivo does not have a specific winter milk scheme. Similar to Arrabawn, it has a “liquid” milk arrangement with Aurivo suppliers that suffices for milk produced over the winter months.