The markets are delivering price movements up and down depending on various deals as they happen or don’t happen.

Quotes have and will come back and in fact some in the industry would prefer if they came back a touch because they were getting too hot to handle for some. In the last week butter quotes took a step back. Having said that prices are at historic highs. The fact is the market is still dominated by shortages.

The shortage of butter has been driving up prices for some time. But the market only really went through the roof in March, after the war started.

The war tension has now calmed a little and it means there is a little more clarity on supply. So the butter price has fallen from €7,500 to just under €7,000 per tonne and prices for supply from eastern Europe are even lower.

Don’t forget one year ago, quotes were 40 to 50% lower.

So the industry is aclimatising to these higher prices with various things happening – some tightness of liquid or fresh milk in some stores across Europe, pastry chefs making smaller pastries so they can stretch ingredients further, and more use of fat-filled milk powder rather than whole milk powder.

Following on from our survey last week showing Irish supply down, the Dutch are the same.

April Dutch milk supply remains well below the level of recent years. Dutch dairies processed a total of 1,151,562 tonnes of milk in April, 2.6% less than in the same month last year.