The Global Dairy Trade (GDT) auction result fell another 9.3% this week – the 10th consecutive fall since mid-March – which brings the average price of product traded to $1,815/t. In total, 142 winning bidders for product traded 46,527 mt of dairy products. The volume for this time of the year is similar to the same auction last year, but down over 20,000t from 2013 figures. The price fall is much more than some of the pessimistic views expressed by industry specialists and creates an even further difference between NZ, European and US prices. For most, it is setting a new low for whole milk powder (WMP) product especially.
The Global Dairy Trade (GDT) auction result fell another 9.3% this week – the 10th consecutive fall since mid-March – which brings the average price of product traded to $1,815/t. In total, 142 winning bidders for product traded 46,527 mt of dairy products. The volume for this time of the year is similar to the same auction last year, but down over 20,000t from 2013 figures.
The price fall is much more than some of the pessimistic views expressed by industry specialists and creates an even further difference between NZ, European and US prices. For most, it is setting a new low for whole milk powder (WMP) product especially.
In terms of products and prices, the big fallers were skim milk powder (SMP) and WMP. SMP was down 14.4%, while WMP fell 10.3% to trade at $1,590/t. Butter fell 6.1% to trade at $2,293/t.
Following a fall of over 13% at the last auction two weeks ago, cheddar was up 0.2% to $2,663/t.
On the world market, prices expressed in US$ have generally decreased in the last fortnight, except for US prices for butter and cheddar, which still benefit from a strong domestic demand. Price decreases were particularly strong for milk powder.
EU price decreases range from -2% for cheddar to -6% for WMP. In Oceania, the most remarkable drop occurred for WMP (-12%) and SMP (-11%). Oceania is the most competitive region for butter, WMP and cheddar and the US for SMP (although the three regions are very close to each other for this product).
On the demand side, China is still the main world dairy importer of dairy products (in milk equivalent) despite the decrease observed for most of the products this year (January to May), which range from -54% for WMP to -4% for whey.
US, Mexico and Egypt have shown strong increases in butter imports (+228%, +99% and +60% respectively). Japan, the US, South Korea and Mexico lead the ranking of cheese importers in 2015, with increased volumes compared with last year, while Russia has cut its imports by 62%.
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