Supermarkets in Ireland are showing no sign of cutting their milk price despite UK equivalents dropping their price by at least 5p.

Last week, Tesco in the UK was the first to announce that it will reduce its four pint bottle from £1.65 to £1.55.

Aldi, Lidl, Asda and Sainsbury’s joined their competitor by reducing the price of a pint to 90p. While the drop has been welcomed, milk in the UK still costs more than double the average price before Covid.

Tesco Ireland told the Farming Independent that “like all retailers, we agree a price through a tendered process.”

Both Aldi and Lidl Ireland said that they monitor pricing on a day-to-day basis and react to changes in input costs.

The current price for a litre of milk for a consumer in Ireland is €1.15.

IFA Fresh Milk Producers chair John Wynne said that any cut here would put the fresh milk market under huge pressure.

“The retail price on the shelf has been too cheap. There is no justification and no room for a price drop,” he said.

It comes as dairy farmers here have seen the price they are paid for their milk cut by 16c/L over the past three months as global demand for dairy products is expected to stay subdued until the second half of 2023, with prices expected to slowly increase towards 2024.

Less than 10pc of milk supplies in Ireland is consumed on the domestic market as fresh milk and manufactured dairy products. Fresh milk exclusively makes up less than 5pc of domestic milk supplies of 8.8 billion litres.

Meanwhile, the dairy industry in the UK is much different, with almost half of all milk produced sold as fresh milk. This is followed by the production of cheese, butter, and milk powder.

For the vast majority of dairy farmers in Ireland, a change in milk price at retail level won’t have much of an impact on their monthly cheque.

Market Analyst at Vesper, Jesper Endlich, told the Bord Bia Dairy Markets Seminar in Kildare on Tuesday morning that co-ops were no longer able to make profitable dairy commodities in January 2023 and had no other option but to cut milk price paid to suppliers.

“We’re close to the bottom now, we believe. The potential to go lower is quite limited,” Mr Endlich said.