News

Cheese trade surplus

Cooperatives Working Together (CWT) accepted one bid from Foremost Farms, two bids from Dairy Farmers of America and five bids from Darigold on a total of 911 metric tons (2,007,971 pounds) of Cheddar cheese and Monterey Jack to the Middle East and Asia. The product will be delivered June through December 2010.

Since CWT reactivated the Export Assistance program on March 18, 2010, it has assisted members in making export sales of Cheddar, Monterey Jack and Gouda cheese totaling 17,029 metric tons (38.0 million pounds) to 18 countries on four continents.

Daily Dairy Report notes a dramatic shift in the cheese trade balance this year, U.S. cheese exports in April totaled a record 31.9 million pounds, up 72 percent from last year while cheese imports in April were down 14 percent to 19.5 million pounds. So, we had a trade balance surplus of 12.4 million pounds for the month.the most ever. In fact, from 2004 through 2009, imports outstripped exports by an average 19.4 million pounds per month.

Tuesday is the deadline for the second round of tenders to buy intervention stocks in the European Union. This second round has 13,700 metric tons of butter and 79,530 metric tons of skim milk powder available. A couple of weeks ago the EU rejected all tenders for skim milk powder saying they were too low. They did accept tenders for 11,500 metric tons of butter; traders say so far that inventory coming back into the market has had no effect on prices as the tendered prices are pretty close to the market price.