There has been a large drop in consumption of milk among Croatian consumers.
The country’s dairy sector has reached a crisis point that the government has to react to before the production of raw milk finds itself in an even more dramatic situation and before the processing industry puts a lock on local facilities and moves to new, more suitable markets, reports Poslovni.hr on August 12, 2016.
The Croatiastočar Association has published an analysis based on the data related to purchases, processing, export and import numbers, as well as financial indicators for the 2009-2015 period. Purchase of milk from the local farms during this period fell from 675,000 to 513,000 tons, imports of raw milk have increased from 3,000 to 141,000 tons, while production of dairy products has decreased from 471,000 to 384,000 tons.
The production of cheese was worst hit. Although exports during the period included in the analysis have increased more than threefold to 5,812 tons, imports have simultaneously surged from 11,000 tons to almost 24,000 tons in 2015, while the production in Croatian dairies amounted to 33,500 tons. Embargo against Russia has accumulated supplies in certain European Union member states, and the Croatian market is thus flooded with an enormous amount of imported cheese at very low prices. This has not motivated the relevant state institutions to seek protection to safeguard the endangered national market and local producers although the European Commission directives allow this, with the accompanying arguments of course.
Branko Bobetić, the director of Croatiastočar, pointed out a large drop in consumption of milk among Croatian consumers. In seven years, it fell from 328,000 to 235,000 tons. In addition to the “explosion” of cheese imports, he also emphasized a huge growth in butter imports during the past year compared to figures from 2012 (by as much as 96 percent), as well as a 27 percent growth in the imports of fermented products. When it comes to exports, all indicators, except for cheese, are in the red. Thus, in the 2009-2015 period the milk exports decreased from 22,000 to 13,000 tons, while the export of fermented products went from 18,000 to 10,000 tons.
