Freshagenda’s latest Global Dairy Directions (GDD) Trade Insights Monthly report shows global trade slowed in April in line with its usual seasonal decline and after a large increase in March. Monthly fluctuations are hard to make sense of, so there is benefit looking at longer-term trends. For the six months to April, and ignoring the large changes in trade between the UK and EU-27, global trade was 4.7% ahead, quite a bit of which was due to the temporary slump in Chinese trade in the first quarter of last year.

With modest growth across categories the dependence on China seemed to be stronger than ever. However, looking back over time, that’s not quite the case and larger dependence has occurred on a few occasions. There were few changes in the trade league table but the recovery in WMP trade and the lift in cheese demand pushed SE Asia up to second spot behind the dominance of China. Weak cheese and fats trade between the UK and EU-27 kept the two regions at the foot of the table, while weak demand at high fat prices kept MENA regions nearby.