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Early Morning Update - March 5, 2024

By: Dairy Team - Chicago, Dairy Chicago

 

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Class III and Cheese futures sold off again to start the week as both block and barrel cheese prices fell Monday. Block cheese fell 2.5 cents intra-session but finished just off that low at $1.5275 or 2.25 cents lower as buyer stepped in to own a low-$1.50s price with 9 loads trading. We’ve written on a number of occasions that the cheese market seems to able to clear product around the $1.60 price average. That remains to be the case for now. Honing in on block cheese specifically, despite the recent weakness, we see a very rangebound market here. The weekly block chart below nicely illustrates this choppy sideways trade over the past 7-8 weeks. Should this “sideways” pattern continue, modest bounces on spot block cheese ought to be expected.

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But bounces do not appear to be on the front burner for NFDM this morning. The GDT auction is underway and SMP is weak by mid-rounds. NFDM closed mostly lower on light volume Monday as the futures market continued to consolidate last Tuesday’s sharp sell off. GDT Auction isn’t helping the bulls this morning as US NFDM futures are posting new contract lows as we type this. Spot NFDM was steady at $119.750 Monday.

Butter futures was the standout firm market to kick off this week. Driven by more spot strength – up 5.25 cents to $281.000 – futures jumped mostly 1-2 cents through Q3. At the risk of putting our neck out there on butter, yesterday’s spot session seemed a bit like window dressing. Bids pushed the market up until a seller sold 1 load at $281.000 and the party stopped. While higher prices can always be in butter’s future, the current market appears to be developing more chop around current levels with neither side having an urgent need to move prices dramatically.

January dairy product production had a few surprises with revisions seen across all products in December. US cheese production was 21 million lbs. below forecast posting a 1.2% YoY decline. It’s a bit surprising to see the drop in production given how weak prices have been. Cheddar production was the big surprise here, coming in 26 million lbs. below forecast. We still need the import/export data to firm this up (Thursday), but it looks like domestic disappearance of cheese in January was down 2.7% from last year and fell below 2022 as well.

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The weak cheese production moved some fat and protein to butter and powder production as they came in higher than forecast. Butter production was 10 million lbs. above forecast while NFDM+SMP production was 13 million lbs. higher but still sits nearly 11% below year ago levels. Total cheese production was revised 12.3 million lbs. lower in December which led to a revision higher in December NFDM+SMP production by 7.4 million lbs.

With production higher, NFDM stocks were 22.5 million lbs. above forecast but they still are down 21.5% from year-ago levels. The higher production in whey caused stocks to be slightly higher while WPC and WPI stocks were at or slightly below forecasted levels. Whey production looks messy with production of most products up sharply while cheese was down. Dry whey production was 6 million lbs. above forecast leading to the first YoY increase since September of 2023.

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