cheese products,
cheesemakers
Ukrainian cheesemakers hope for the growth of demand
As autumn begins, hopes of Ukrainian cheese producers for improving their business have somewhat strengthened. They have already got more orders from distributors and networks for sales in the domestic market. The troubles with supply of cheese products have also been more or less settled.
In such conditions, producers are cancelling mass cheese sales actions and in September some of them will try to sligntly raise prices. Even the export prices for cheese products raised a little after the price collapse in early summer.
Current devaluation of hryvnya is also for the benefit of domestic cheese market operators. On the one hand, some cheese making plants will make more profit on exports, on the other hand, it will deter the increase in cheese imports.
But still it is too early to count on high profitability in the cheese business. It is still unclear if the expectations of the cheese makers on this fall sales growth on the domestic market are justified and whether producers of cheese products will be able to use the export schemes. Apart from that, the expected rise of purchase price of milk can «swallow» all the benefits of the expected rise in cheese prices.
Thus, if cheese prices rise, this will occur in autumn. In the meanwhile cheesemakers are selling stockpiles by the old prices. On the domestic market traditional cheeses are sold by producers to distributors at UAH 120−140/kg. For export, cheese is sold mainly at 3700−4300 USD/t. Prices of the external sales of cheese products, depending on the variations in export schemes, vary mainly in the range of 1850−2100 USD/t.