The butter price is once again breaking a record with the leading Dutch quotation of € 7,800/ton, as reported by Chief Consultant Niels Ole Nielsen in LandbrugsAvisen.

Increased consumption without a corresponding increase in milk production has led to increases in market prices for dairy products, since the autumn – and this particularly applies to butter. This information is provided by Niels Ole Nielsen, Chief Consultant at the Danish Agriculture and Food Council, to LandbrugsAvisen (agricultural news media). With a Dutch quotation of € 7,800/ton, the butter price this week reached the highest level so far and exceeds the previous record from the spring of 2022 of € 7,350/ton. If you look specifically at the development over the past year, the price has increased by as much as 80 percent. One of the reasons for the large increase is that butter production has been declining in both Denmark and the EU – in the first six months of 2024, by 3.2 percent in Denmark and 2.0 percent in the entire EU.

Relative to the other dairy products, price increases have also been noted, but to a somewhat lesser extent. For whole milk powder, the price has increased by 35 percent since the beginning of the year, whereas the prices for both skimmed milk powder and Edam have increased about 15 percent. However, prices for these products are still nowhere close to reaching the same level as when they peaked in 2022.

Outside the EU, the situation is largely the same. At the New Zealand auction, Global Dairy Trade, the so-called GDT Index, has risen by about 30 percent; however, the index is still far from reaching the record level from 2022.