The view was mostly a sea of red on the dairy trading screen today. Butter fell hard, landing below the $2.10-per-pound mark. The stock decline in last Friday’s Cold Storage report hasn’t stopped the price slide. Instead, physical traders are looking at heavy and cheap cream volumes, which are creating big margins for the butter churn. Cheese continues to bounce between $1.70 and $1.80, still weighed down by increased milk volume and component levels.
Butter plunged to a new year-to-date low of $2.05 per pound at the CME, with 12 lots changing hands. The 13.5¢ slide was the biggest single-day drop since November 2023. Blocks fell five cents to $1.76, while barrels slipped 1.5¢ to $1.785. Volume traded: three lots of blocks, zero of barrels. Dry whey lost two cents to close at 55¢, with four lots exchanged. NDM ticked up a quarter cent to $1.255 per pound, with a healthy 14 loads trading.
The butter drop carried over to futures, with September ($2.2203), October ($2.255), November ($2.275), February ($2.30), April ($2.3953) and July ($2.4988) all settling limit down (-7.5¢). Fourth quarter Class IV declined to $17.51 per hundredweight, a 34¢ loss. Class III also tumbled, down 36¢ to $17.73.
The global butter price gap remains wide. The CME weekly average is $2.16 per pound compared to $3.16 in New Zealand and $3.61 in Europe. U.S. cheese also remains at a steep discount at $1.80 per pound, well below New Zealand’s $2.06 and Europe’s $2.30. Milk powder is still tightly clustered. CME NDM’s average sits at $1.26 per pound, just slightly ahead of $1.25 in New Zealand and Europe.
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