There was positive sentiment in the dairy markets this week, with the European spot market prices for all product categories increasing.

The biggest jump was for butter, increasing by €80/t to hit €5,570/t. This follows an increase of €260/t last week, so it has increased in price by €340/t over the last fortnight, which is a 6.5% rise.

This follows on from further strengthening in butter prices at the Global Dairy Trade (GDT) auction in early February, which went up 10.3% and the US spot market price for butter is up 8.1% and still leading the EU price.

As for powders, these are up this week in Europe too, with whole milk powder (WMP) increasing in price by €60/t to €3,625/t and skim milk powder (SMP) increasing by €30/t to €2,475/t. These price increases for powder go some of the way towards bridging the gap between the EU powder price and the GDT powder price.

At this week’s GDT auction, the prices were much flatter than the recent highs.

The overall index increased by just half of one percent, but considering that it increased by 4.2% at the previous auction, it is still a good result all things considered.

WMP prices fell by 1.8%, while SMP prices increased by 1.3%. Butter stayed more or less flat, while anhydrous milk fat increased by 8.6% in price. The quantity sold was similar to the last auction at just over 24,000t of product.

Milk supply in New Zealand for December ended up 2.6% higher than the same period the year before. New Zealand supply for 2023 in total was up 2.1% compared with 2022.