Milk Prices February 26, 2014 12:00 am Arla is currently setting the pace in the British milk market. The co-op has announced that its members’ price will be held at a healthy 35.01ppl for March. At the same time it has announced that the price paid to its direct suppliers (non-co-op members) will rise from the 1st March to 33.5ppl. All this puts pressure on other milk purchasers to at least hold their prices, if not make further increases. At the same time the divergence between formula prices and the ‘free market’ continues. Dairy Crest has announced that its formula price will reduce from the 1st March by 0.314ppl to 30.947ppl. This is blamed largely on a fall in wholesale cream prices. At a global level, the latest Fonterra auction on the 18th February saw prices ease slightly. The auction index was down 1.2% since the previous sale, but values are still at historically high levels of $5,016 per tonne.
