Arrabawn is making all the headlines this month as the co-op holds top spot in the July milk league while accepting an offer to sell off its liquid milk sales book next year (see p18).

In July the north Tipperary-headquartered processor lifted from €7.36/kg MS to €7.70/kg MS, the equivalent of almost 2.5c/l ex VAT in old money. That was on top of a 2.8 c/l lift ex vat in June, so almost 5.3c/l ex VAT of an increase in two months at a top-end price.

It means an 11 c/l shift in price from March to July inclusive. It probably never happened before in the history of the co-op.

The other player in the ongoing liquid milk sale, Aurivo, is following very close to Arrabawn in second place. It gets the nod just slightly ahead of the big two in the east, Glanbia (soon to be called Tirlán) and Dairygold. It’s not often we see the west Cork co-ops coming in behind most of the milk in the country as Lakeland leads Division 2.

Tipperary Co-op made a big burst to get into Division 2, leaving Kerry on its own in Division 3.

While Kerry suppliers got the January to June top-up, the July price lift wasn’t enough to take them out of Division 3.

With the Kerry bonus included now in the cumulative column, it still sits about €1,700 off the Aurivo cumulative to date.

The average league price is now almost €7.60/kg MS or 54 c/l ex VAT (57 incl VAT). The average price for July last year was 4.70/kg MS or 33.7 c/l ex VAT. That’s an increase of 75% on the July price last year. Imagine if fertiliser hadn’t gone up 300%.