Improvement is not visible in Ukrainian cheese branch. Export is limited by scanty deliveries to the CIS, mainly to Kazakhstan. Internal consumption is declining. That forces to reduce considerably the production and hampers an increase of prices.

Plants sell traditional cheeses at UAH 56000-60000/t to distributors, as before. At the same time the majority of operators stimulate sales by discounts.

Cheese is exported to the CIS at USD 5000-5600/t. It is quite possible that sellers would confidentially sell the products at much lower prices, if someone wanted to buy big volume. It should not surprise, after all, Gouda and Edam in Europe are sold at USD 3600 now. Therefore traditional importers may think, where is better to buy cheese.

In conditions of essential narrowing of external and internal market the production of cheese is reduced further. In August it decreased by 18% to 7 ths t, which was almost a half less than a year ago. The ranking of manufacturers was considerably changed, because many leading companies stopped processing at a few plants at once.

Manufacturers of cheese products remained active enough, because of their specific schemes of foreign trade. Sales of these products are already higher, than sales of traditional cheeses.

For now nobody can forecasts further development the market. If deliveries of cheese to the Customs Union are not renewed, production volumes will remain low in Ukraine at the best. Seasonal increase of prices is not expected.

Source: infagro.com.ua