Crisis in the Polish dairy sector

This is evidenced not only by the industry's increasingly poor economic performance, with reports of milk payment problems coming from many small plants and cooperatives to the Polish Milk Chamber.

wooden plate with dairy products
Beeld: ©@AgaMurawska

A significant role in this situation is played by the increase in operating costs of the dairy industry (they rose by 16.7% to 13.5 billion PLN), and their relatively high dynamics was determined primarily by high prices for raw milk. And all this despite the situation in the first quarter of 2023 that total revenues of the dairy industry increased by 8.4 % to 13.5 billion PLN, including the value of direct exports by 14.1 % to 2.4 billion PLN.

Agnieszka Maliszewska, director of the Polish Chamber of Milk and vice president of COGECA, stresses that she does not recall such a difficult year for the dairy sector in her 25 years of work.

According to experts, the global situation of the dairy sector is not much better at all. Declines in the prices paid for milk to farmers are evident in many EU countries.

Experts and analysts in the dairy sector wonder whether the actions related to the current crisis situation should be linked to the behavior of the Chinese market, the decline in consumption or some speculative actions. Undoubtedly, the war in Ukraine has also contributed very seriously to such destabilization in the milk market, the Polish Milk Chamber points out.

Source: Farmer