In the first three months of this year EU milk powder exports were significantly up year-on-year, with SMP and WMP quantities showing the largest gains.
This is according to DairyCo which notes that the competitiveness of EU powder prices on global markets over the past year is likely to have supported the rise in export demand.
It says EU SMP exports were up on Q1 2013 by 57%, boosted by an extra ten thousand tonnes to Algeria, as well as steadily increasing exports to Indonesia. The EU has also managed to benefit from the spike in Chinese SMP import demand at the start of the year, with an eight-fold increase in the amount of SMP exported to China when compared to the same period in 2013. Algeria also became the primary destination for EU WMP exports in Jan-Mar 2014, accounting for 20% of the total volumes and contributing to a 28% rise in total EU WMP exports.
DairyCo also highlight that EU cheese was the only key dairy product to have seen a fall in export volumes in Q1 2014, down one per cent from Q1 2013, primarily due to a 4% decrease in exports to Russia. For butter however, shipments to Russia grew by almost a third, contributed to an overall 19% increase in EU butter exports.
