Müller joins Dairy Crest and First Milk in raising milk prices

From September, the cost of its farmgate milk will increase by 1.31 pence per litre (ppl) to a standard price of 29ppl.

The news comes after Dairy Crest announced last month that it would increase the milk price paid to its Davidstow farmers by 1ppl to 29ppl from September. Also, First Milk revealed it had raised its ‘A’ milk price for August between 0.5ppl and 0.9ppl, to between 27.29ppl and 28.27ppl.

Müller, Britain’s largest producer of branded and own-label fresh milk, butter, yogurt, desserts and dairy ingredients products, said the move to increase the price of its milk was one of a number of measures it had unveiled to boost confidence among dairy suppliers in a “volatile and unpredictable”​ market.

Help dairy farming businesses​

It has also introduced a new Direct Futures Contract option, giving dairy farmers the opportunity to agree a monthly price for up to 25% of their milk volume up to 12 months in advance, as well as a Farm Insight service that provides data, welfare tools and benchmarking to help dairy farming businesses. 

The business has previously confirmed £100M of investment in its UK network of dairies to build an additional £700M worth of dairy produce sales made with milk from British farmers by 2020.

“There is a lot of uncertainty out there but we are optimistic,”​ Müller agriculture director Rob Hutchison said. “Britain remains one of the best places in the world to produce milk and Müller is investing heavily to ensure that consumers will be able to buy more and more dairy products made in Britain with milk from British farmers.​

‘A progressive industry’​

“We want to work with farmers to realise our shared ambitions as the basis of a progressive industry with the security and confidence to invest. The steps we are outlining today are early measures which signal our intent.”​

According to the most recent Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs figures, the average UK farmgate price – which represents the average price paid to producers for all milk sold to dairies – stood at 26.75ppl in June.

This was a 0.03ppl (0.1%) decrease on the May average price. However, the June 2017 price was 6.80ppl (34.1%) higher than the same month last year.