Despite the decline in global dairy product prices this year, New Zealand posted its seventh monthly trade surplus in May, driven by exports of milk powder, butter and cheese.
Exports rose 13% to $4.6 billion in May from the year-earlier month, led by dairy exports to China. Economists, though, say lower dairy prices are starting to show up in trade data.
The GDT price index fell 4.9% to US$3595 a tonne, the ninth slide in the last 10 auctions. About 41,513t of product was sold, up from 31,984t two weeks ago.
In the latest GDT auction, butter slumped 13.6% to US$3181/t, anhydrous milk fat decreased 7.4% to US$/t, while whole milk powder fell 5.4% to US$3459/t.
Cheddar slid 2.9% to US$4226/t, while rennet casein fell 2.1% to US$10,789/t, and skim milk powder inched 0.9% lower to US$3810/t.
Butter milk powder rose 4.0% to US$4135/t.
Milk protein concentrate wasn't offered at the event, while lactose either wasn’t offered or wasn’t sold.
Ahead of the release of the latest GDT data, the New Zealand dollar was trading at US0.8778 at about 2:50am Auckland time. After the release of the latest GDT data, the kiwi rose as high as 0.8786 cents and recently traded at 0.8679 cents.
There were 149 winning bidders out of 184 participating bidders at the auction over 12 rounds. The number of qualified bidders was 702, up from 690 two weeks ago.
