Ahead of the Royal Welsh Show, NFU Cymru Milk Board chairman Aled Jones has said that with further positive moves on the markets, more money should now be coming back to the farm gate and not ‘held-up’ in the supply chain.

Dairy commodity prices have strengthened with AHDB figures showing that as the markets continued to firm throughout June, wholesale prices have also been pushed upwards. The bulk cream price increased by 28 per cent between May and June and the estimated cream income to a liquid processor was up by 1.41ppl to 6.40ppl in June.

Despite a number of milk price increase announcements for July and August, prices remain far below sustainable levels on farm and we need to ensure that extra money is passed back to farm as quickly as possible.

Mr Jones said, “With the cream prices rising, we should be seeing milk prices improve across the board and in that respect it was disappointing to see Muller hold the milk price for August. There are clearly delays which just don’t make sense.

“Both AMPE and MCVE, dairy market indicators, have recently increased with AMPE up 12 per cent to 18.9ppl in June and MCVE up 19 per cent to 19.6ppl in the same month. With such leaps forward in those price indicators surely we should at least see some of the lower end cheese prices start to improve. Spot milk prices have also jumped from 16ppl in May to 25ppl in early July, yet we haven’t seen such a big lift in B prices – these should theoretically be the first to react to market improvements.

“On liquid milk we need to make sure processors aren’t hiding behind retail premiums. Retailers have stuck by their word with minimum pricing on liquid milk, and in some cases on cheese, but these should not be used to hide real dairy market improvements.

“The critical message has to be that dairy farmers must see increased returns from the market place going back to the farm gate quickly and not ‘held-up’ in the supply chain. We expect farmers to see a fair share of any improvements in markets returned to their own balance sheets and not held back by processors.”

During the Royal Welsh Show, NFU Cymru will be holding a dairy panel discussion entitled, ‘Opportunities for Welsh Dairy Producers’ at its stand on Tuesday, (11am-12pm). This discussion will be chaired by NFU Cymru president,Stephen James with contributions from Aled Jones, Michael Oakes (NFU Dairy Board), Gwyn Jones (Chairman AHDB Dairy) and Andy Richardson (Welsh Dairy Leadership Board).