First Milk is to further raise the standard price it pays producers in its balancing milk pool.

The UK co-operative said it will increase the standard litre price it pays to producers in its cheese and balancing pools to 28ppl.

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Last month, First Milk had raised this price by 1.25p per litre to 27.35p per litre.

“We know that all feed costs are rocketing, silage has been poor in most parts of the country, and farms are looking at a hard winter,” said First Milk chairman Bill Mustoe. “So it was important that we made this move. However the job is never done for us on squeezing the business to get more returns for our farmers.”

Due to the phasing of delivering the increased market returns and business efficiencies, the firm said its cheese pool increase will happen in two stages: 1ppl on 1 November and 0.75ppl on 1 December. For balancing pool members, there will be an increase of 0.65ppl on 1 December.

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