On the Chicago Mercantile Exchange milk futures started the holiday-shortened week in mixed trade Tuesday ahead of a mixed cold storage report. Class III milk prices were mainly higher throughout 2022. July and August 2022 led market strength adding 13 cents/cwt each. Class IV ended mostly even to 30-40 stronger in Q4 2022.
The CME spot dairy auction trade saw dry whey unchanged at $0.81. Blocks up $0.0025 at $1.99. Three sales were made at that price. Barrels up $0.02 at $1.9550. One trade was made at that price. Butter down $0.04 at $2.65. Six trades were made from $2.6325 to $2.65. Nonfat dry milk unchanged at $1.85.
USDA released their monthly Cold Storage report on Tuesday and total natural cheese again set new monthly records while butter stocks dropped by a third. Cheese stocks during January were up slightly on the month and three percent on the year at more than 1.4 billion pounds. Butter inventories were up 11 percent from the previous month but down 33 percent from last year at 221 million pounds.
