The big three Irish milk purchasers included in the analysis have lagged at the bottom of the table for most of 2023.
Global Dairy Trade is up for the fifth consecutive auction with the average price now at €3,321.62, up 4pc on 16 January.
This represents an almost 8pc increase in the index in 2024, with trade having been largely positive since September of 2023.
Butter is up 10.3pc, followed by cheddar (+6.3pc), skim milk powder (+4.6pc) and whole milk powder (+3.4pc).
It comes as Chairperson of the ICMSA Dairy Committee, Noel Murphy, pointed out that Irish milk prices are “downright poor” by comparison with counterparts for 2023.
According to the EDF-ZuivelNL International Milk Price Comparison, the big three Irish milk purchasers included in the analysis have lagged at the bottom of the table for most of 2023.
While conceding that Irish milk prices took a cut in the first half of 2023 that reflected cuts in international markets, Mr Murphy said that Ireland’s export-facing dairy sector made it more vulnerable than those producers with massive domestic demand.
But beyond that, he felt, a discretionary gap had opened between the prices paid by Irish processors and their mainland EU counterparts.
“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,” he said.
“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.
“That’s a massive amount of money and it’s particularly massive when it’s set against the kind of exorbitant input prices we 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.”
ICMSA has called on Irish processors to “climb up the table” in 2024, warning that “suspicions will grow that the farmer-suppliers are subsidising everyone else in the Irish dairy supply chain”, Mr Murphy said.
