The Irish Creamery and Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) has called on Aldi and Lidl not to differentiate between the minimum price it pays for a litre of milk in Ireland and the UK.
Last week, both discounters announced they would pay UK farmers 28 pence per litre, which would, the ICSMA said, ‘translate to a price of the order of 38 cents per litre in Ireland, a figure […] which was some 10 cents per litre more than most Irish milk suppliers are currently receiving.’
ICSMA deputy president Pat McCormack said that Irish milk suppliers were ‘entitled to assume that Aldi and Lidl will commit to a similar currency-adjusted minimum price here within the next few days’.
He added that such an “announcement would prompt an intriguing question as to why Aldi and Lidl could pay a price equivalent to 38 cents per litre, but Dunnes, Supervalu and Tesco could not – or would not.”
Farmers say that the price paid per litre has fallen by about a third since last year.
Commenting to the Irish Independent, an ICSMA spokesperson said that the supermarkets’ role in dictating milk prices is “so powerful that they can dictate the price backwards to the cow and then forwards. All the power is concentrated in that link in the chain.”
An Aldi spokesperson told the paper that the retailer offers its three milk processors “fair prices based on an annual tender process.”
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