The continued production has cemented Europe’s place as the main source of the milk supply ‘problem’ for sellers in international markets, Dairy Australia has said.

Pressure is being maintained on prices due to a combination of extra supply and no access to the Russian market.

This, Dairy Australia has said, is even as El Nino impacts supply from Oceania.

The biggest contributions continue to come from northwestern Europe, with Ireland, the Netherlands and the UK together posting over half of the year-to-date gains (around 1.5 billion litres).

Given milk production in the first quarter of 2015 remained constrained by quotas, the report says it is highly likely that much larger year-on- year growth figures will be reported over the next few months.

Meanwhile the latest figures from the Milk Market Observatory show that the EU public intervention scheme is now over one-third full, just six weeks into 2016.

Some 37,000t of skimmed milk powder (SMP) has been offered to the measure in 2016.

Picture of the Australian cattle industry

Cull cow numbers in Australia, its ays, remain significantly elevated, which the report attributes to a combination of high prices for manufacturing beef, relatively cheap replacement stock, and continued margin pressures.

Sales for the 12 months to December 2015 were 49% higher than the same period year earlier, and 47% above the 5-year average, according to the outlook report.

Chinese demand for Australian dairy cattle has been hit by lower domestic milk prices and the opening of their market to live cattle imports from other origins. Some 83% of dairy cattle exports go to China from Australia.

Consequently, Dairy Australia has said that exports during the 12 months fell 7% compared to year-earlier, from 71,503 to 76,663 head.