Both First Milk and Muller have announced that they are to increase the price they pay for their milk.
First Milk, the farmer-owned co-operative headquartered in Glasgow, is to increase its December "A" price in the Scottish Mainland pool by 2p per litre (ppl) taking it to 23.24ppl, while the "B" price is set at 25ppl.
Chairman Clive Sharpe said: "We have continued confidence that our milk price will increase further during the first quarter of 2017. Since June, the average price increase across our main milk pools is over 8ppl. These increases reflect both the improved market returns and the accelerating improvements in our own business."
Meanwhile Muller has announced that it will start the new year by adding a further 2.5ppl to the milk price it offers farmers, building on its 2ppl uplift which takes effect from today (Thursday).
The actual price paid to Muller's farmers on non-aligned contracts for January is expected to be 26.54ppl. This includes a standard price of 25.44ppl plus the separate retailer supplement estimated to be 1.1ppl in January.
Muller is also concluding a country-wide series of 18 meetings with farmer suppliers to gain feedback on future milk contract and farmer representation proposals. These events follow the acquisition of Dairy Crest's dairy operations and subsequent expansion of Muller's milk supply base.
Lyndsay Chapman, Agriculture Director at Muller Milk & Ingredients said: "Our meetings have provided an excellent opportunity for us to engage with over 1,000 Muller farmers.
"We are bringing together two milk supply groups, each used to different representational models, whilst moving to a single milk contract which aims to better align the supply of milk with our demand in the future.
"It's clear that in the past few years the whole dairy sector has suffered from supply and demand imbalance. Real damage has been caused to farmers and processors as a result of having to dispose of large volumes of excess milk at very low values when production surges, or conversely having to buy from third parties at high values when production falls."
Mr Chapman expects to send Muller farmers new contract documents in January, with the option to sign up from February.
Market round-up
Wallets Marts sold 1982 prime lambs in Castle Douglas on Tuesday to a top of £90 per head and 211p per kg to average £75.70 and 175.4p (+10.6p on the week).
There were also 272 cast sheep forward when ewes sold to £88 for Suffolks and £55 for Blackfaces.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here