Milk market in Ukraine to grow by 3-4% in 2013, says expert

Kyiv, February 18 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine's milk market will grow by 3-4% in 2013 from 2012, according to Chairman of the Board at the Union of Dairy Companies of Ukraine Vadym Chaharovsky.

"We hope that the pace of the increase in consumption [of milk and dairy foods calculated in volumes of milk] on the domestic market will be by 3-4% per year and will remain the same until 2017," he said at a press conference at Interfax- Ukraine on Monday.

According to the expert, the domestic milk market rose by 4% in the last four years.

He estimated that the capacity of the milk market in 2012 was about 7.15 million tonnes, with production being about 8-8.5 million tonnes.

Citing official statistical information, Chaharovsky said that milk production in the country last year was over 11 million tonnes. Such a difference in milk outputs is connected to "manipulations of volumes of milk from private households," he said.

Chaharovsky projects that 4.9-5 million tonnes of milk will be provided for processing against 4.8 million tonnes in 2012. He also said that imports of dairy foods to Ukraine may growth this year.

He said that in 2012 Ukraine increased imports of dairy products by 1.6 times from 2011, to 100,000 tonnes. In particular, the supply of powered skimmed milk used in the production of dairy foods skyrocketed by 10 times, while imports of cheese doubled.

According to the expert, the growth of dairy imports is also fueled by high purchasing prices of raw milk in the country, which is UAH 4-4.5 per liter of milk.

As reported with reference to the State Statistics Service, Ukraine in 2012 boosted milk production by 2.7% from 2011, to 11.7 million tonnes.