Domestic butter supply still fails to cover demand

Domestic butter supply remains insufficient to cover demand in Switzerland next year © Keystone / Gaetan Bally

The Federal Office for Agriculture (FOAG) has increased the tariff quota for butter by 3,000 tonnes from January 2023. The domestic butter supply remains insufficient to cover demand in Switzerland next year, according to industry estimates.

The milk sector organisation said the total milk volume was likely to remain low. Therefore, taking into account cheese production, there was too little milk left over for butter production, it said on Tuesday. The branch organisation therefore submitted an application to the agriculture office for an increase in the tariff quota.

The FOAG already released an additional 6,100 tonnes of butter for import in the quota this year. In each of the past two years, the tariff quota for butter was increased by around 5,000 tonnes, said Stefan Kohler, managing director of the milk sector organisation.

This is because the butter market in Switzerland turned around in the first year of the Covid pandemic in 2020. Cheese sales and butter sales had risen very encouragingly at that time, but since the same amount of milk was produced, there was not enough milk for butter.

Owing to the increasing number of vegetarians, cheese is also very much in vogue, Kohler said. After several years of cheese sales growth of around 5%, he said it was unclear whether the growth in cheese exports would continue.