Irish milk processors are "bumping along the bottom" in terms of milk prices, the Irish Creamery and Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) has said.

Chair of the ICMSA dairy committee, Noel Murphy, pointed out that Irish milk prices were “downright poor” by comparison with its counterparts internationally for 2023.

According to the EDF-ZuivelNL International milk price comparison, Irish milk purchasers included in the analysis have lagged at the bottom of the table for most of 2023, he said.

Irish milk prices took a "savage cut" and, he added, Ireland’s export-facing dairy sector made it more vulnerable than those producers with massive domestic demand.

But even beyond that, he felt, a discretionary gap had opened between the prices paid by Irish processors and their mainland EU counterparts.

12-month average

“The average milk price using European solids is at €45.27 per 100kg on a rolling 12-month average while the top Irish processor is at €40.14 per 100kg with the three included Irish milk processors occupying the bottom three positions in the league.

"The consequence of this difference is very serious for an Irish milk supplier supplying 400,000 litres amounting to approximately €20,000 of a loss between the EU average and the highest paying Irish co-op in the league in 2023," he said.

This, he argued is a massive amount of money and is particularly massive when set against the kind of exorbitant input prices experienced last year.

"Bumping along at the bottom of the milk price league is bad enough; bumping along at the bottom when the farmers supplying you are paying amongst the highest inputs is an altogether different kind of failure.

"It’s really not good enough to see our ‘big three’ processors occupying the bottom three places on the milk price league and we want and expect to see them climb up the table this year or the suspicions will grow that the farmer-suppliers are subsidising everyone else in the Irish dairy supply chain," he concluded.