Arla Foods amba’s conventional milk price for January 2019 will reduce by 1.5 eurocents per litre.
When applied to the UK manufacturing litre, alongside the positive impact of the quarterly currency smoothing mechanism of 0.02 pence, this equates to 1.33 pence per litre, taking the manufacturing price per litre down to 30.24 pence from 1 January 2019 for Arla’s farmer owners.
Arla Foods amba board director, and farmer owner, Johnnie Russell, said: “As anticipated, the recent commodity price declines have lowered returns in the market, particularly in fat based products, and, with global milk volumes remaining up on last year, this has resulted in reduced market prices overall.
“While we are not immune from the impact of global market pressures, it is down to our strength as a farmer-owned cooperative and the growth of our brands that overall this year we have delivered the industry’s best averaged milk price.”
Graham Wilkinson, Head of Agriculture at Arla continues; “Being farmer-owned enables us to work together across the whole supply chain from farm to fork to drive long-term sustainable benefits for all our farmer-owners. Through stepping up our collaboration with customers we have played an active part in developing industry leading, award winning farmer-led initiatives. It is imperative that we continue to work together to create and develop opportunities for sustainable growth.”
“It is our mission to deliver the best possible milk price for our farmer owners while creating opportunities for growth. To enable us to achieve this it is strategic investments such as the recently announced acquisition in the strategic Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region which are also significant for our owners. It is growth opportunities like this that are enabled by being part of a cooperative and give access to new product categories and new growth markets.”