The New Year hasn’t been a happy one for dairy farmers as our coverage of supermarket prices wars and processor price cuts have shown.

But dairy farmers on the Muller standard milk price have some hope as Muller announced they will freeze the price they pay to farmers for February. In a twist to the tale, Muller stands out from the First Milk, Dairy Crest and Arla crowd, all of whom have cut their prices.

It’s a significant imbalance across the industry with non-aligned Muller Wiseman Milk Group producers receiving 25.9 p/litre compared to First Milk, whose liquid pool will get 20.1p/litre, a fall of 1.6p/litre, while the manufacturing price will slide to 20.47p/litre.

It even remains higher than the price offered by For farmers on Davidstow Dairy Crest contracts whose price has also slid and now remains at 24.59 p/litre.

Muller said it recognised dairy farmers were operating in ‘tough times’ and said it shared industry concerns about the short term outlook for farmgate prices. The company continued to say they couldn’t guarantee these price freezes would remain.

Claims that the price drops are due to a fall in global markets are being shunned by farmers and agriculturalists as around three quarters of UK milk still goes into domestic liquid and cheese.

Claims that Arla’s position has been weakened due to the Russian import ban has been said to ‘offer no comfort’ to UK farmers who had expected ‘a better future from hype surrounding emerging and expanding markets abroad’