May GB milk production totalled 1,138 million litres, according to estimates based on our daily deliveries survey. This is 1.9% below May 2019 and 1.4% below our March forecast . Our June forecast update will be out later this month.

Last month, we reported on how farmers curbing production at the request of their buyers reduced April production. With the latest available data, the estimated amount cut from April production has been revised from 23 million litres to 19 million litres. For May, we estimate that production was 36 million litres lower than if a portion of farmers hadn’t curbed their production.

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Post-peak, there continues to be a gap between where we would have been and where we are. This shows that it hasn’t been so easy to turn the tap back on again. However, there have been some differences between the reducer companies and non-reducers, which has closed the gap marginally. The average week-on-week decline (week ending 16 May to w/e 6 June) was -0.9% for reducers but -1.2% for non-reducers, our estimates suggest.

This indicates that those who curbed their peak are having a slightly softer decline from it. However, the curbing of milk production in the run up to the peak is continuing to take around 1m litres per day off the market, compared with what we would have seen without such measures.