The production of raw milk was 160.0 million tons in 2022, of which 96% was cow's milk. The production of raw milk on EU farms was estimated at 160.0 million tons in 2022, representing a year-on-year decrease of 0.3 million tons.

Relative Stability

This relative stability in EU production levels can be contextualized by examining production levels in the period leading up to the elimination of quotas; EU farms produced 149.7 million tons of raw milk in 2014.

In 2022, the vast majority of raw milk was delivered to dairy factories; only 9.8 million tons were used on farms, either consumed by the farmer and their family, sold directly to consumers, used as fodder, or processed directly.

Out of the 149.9 million tons of milk delivered to dairy factories, 145.6 million tons were cow's milk, with the remainder being sheep's milk, goat's milk, or buffalo's milk.

Average apparent milk yield per cow in the EU continues to rise

Several factors can impact a country's annual apparent milk production per dairy cow, including the structure of the dairy herd. In the EU, the apparent annual milk production continued to increase, reaching 7,653 kg per dairy cow in 2022.

As a national average, the apparent yields were highest in Denmark (10,187 kg per cow) and Estonia (10,128 kg per cow) and lowest in Bulgaria (3,621 kg per cow) and Romania (3,367 kg per cow).

Among the major EU milk-producing member states, apparent yields were above the EU average in the Netherlands and Germany but slightly below average in France, Poland, and Italy.

A fifth of EU cow's milk was collected by German dairy factories

Traditionally, hygiene regulations required frequent milk collection over short distances between farms and dairy factories. However, the development of farm cooling tanks and larger milk tankers has made this hygiene concern less critical. Meanwhile, market restrictions have contributed to cross-border milk flows between farms and dairy factories or between dairy factories.

In 2022, just over a fifth (21.1%) of raw cow's milk in the EU was produced on farms in Germany, and a similar proportion (22.0%) was processed by German dairy factories.

Indeed, just as Germany, France, Poland, the Netherlands, and Italy together supplied approximately two-thirds (64.7%) of raw EU cow's milk in 2022, they also represented two-thirds (66.0%) of the collected cow's milk by dairy factories.

There are some EU member states where animals other than cows make a significant contribution to overall milk production, particularly in rural or arid regions, especially in the Mediterranean area.

In 2022, Spain produced 1.1 million tons of sheep and goat milk, Greece produced 0.9 million tons, and France produced 0.8 million tons. Italy produced 0.7 million tons of milk from non-cow animals, including almost all of the EU's buffalo milk production.

Cow's milk represents the vast majority of milk delivered to dairy factories in most EU member states. However, the majority (57.7%) of milk delivered to dairy factories in Greece in 2022 came from sheep and goats, as did about a fifth (21.1%) in Cyprus.

Acceleration of milk price growth in 2022

There was a strong and consistent increase in the milk price paid to farmers until 2022, with the average price per year being 35.1% higher than the 2021 average.

This represented an acceleration of higher prices, as the 2021 average was 7.2% higher than the average milk price in 2020. These recent changes have emphasized the sharp fluctuations in the average milk price observed earlier (see Figure 5).

Among the major milk-producing member states, there were even stronger increases than the average in milk prices in 2022 in the Netherlands (+47.0%), Poland (+46.9%), Ireland (+44.9%), and Germany (+44.8%). Milk prices were higher in each member state in 2022 compared to 2021, which, in turn, were higher than in 2020.

70% of all whole milk available to EU dairy factories is used to make cheese and butter.

Milk deliveries and dairy production

Milk delivered to dairy factories is processed into a variety of fresh and processed products. Dairy products are recorded based on their weight. Therefore, comparing quantities of different products (e.g., tons of fresh milk and milk powder) is challenging. The volume of whole or skimmed milk used in dairy processes provides more comparable figures. In 2022, 149.9 million tons of whole milk available for the EU dairy sector were processed.

The production of 2.3 million tons of butter and the so-called "yellow products" (such as butter oil and melted butter) in the EU in 2022 required 46.4 million tons of whole milk (see Table 1).

The production of butter and yellow products also generated 43.0 million tons of skimmed milk. Another 13.9 million tons of skimmed milk were generated by cream production, and 0.9 million tons from other fresh products. The produced skimmed milk was used with 84.3 million tons of whole milk to process other dairy products.

Indeed, 16.9 million tons of skimmed milk, together with 59.2 million tons of whole milk, were used to produce 10.4 million tons of cheese in the EU in 2022.

Together, cheese and butter production used 70.4% of all whole milk available for dairy in the EU.

The EU also produced 22.5 million tons of drinking milk from 9.7 million tons of skimmed milk and 12.7 million tons of whole milk. Drinking milk accounted for 8.5% of all whole milk used by dairy factories in 2022.

In 2022, the EU produced 3.0 million tons of powdered dairy products from 20.7 million tons of skimmed milk and 4.1 million tons of whole milk.

Germany produced about a fifth of the EU's drinking milk (19%), butter (20%), and cheese (22%) in 2022. The other main cheese-producing member states were France (a provisional quantity of 1.9 million tons, about 18% of the EU total) and Italy (1.4 million tons, about 13% of the EU total).

The Netherlands had the second-highest level of whey production (approximately 15% of the EU total) and the fourth-highest level of cheese production (about 9% of the EU total), while Ireland had the third-highest share of butter produced (approximately 13% of the EU total).