Market Update
The molasses market continues to remain firm due to strong local demand in origin from ethanol and smaller than expected crops. The Russia/Ukraine situation also continues to impact on prices due to Russian and Belarussian beet molasses being avoided by customers creating extra demand on other origins and keeping prices high. Alongside the continuing high molasses price, we are seeing other liquid co-products, pot ale syrup etc also remain high due to strong ongoing demand from the AD/Biogas sector. There is some good news on urea with prices substantially back from their highs in late 2022. This means our high protein Regulated Release blends prices have eased significantly and we are now able to offer forward contracts for 3 months.
Although we are still seeing high prices, we also continue to see strong demand for our molasses-based liquids in both dairy and beef feeding.
Dairy: As the milk price has come down it is important to adopt a feeding strategy to deal with this. Molasses based blends can play an important role by reducing feed costs and improving feed efficiency. See later on for more details.
Beef: With beef prices remaining firm maximising growth rates and feed conversion are both vital to making money. An ED&F Man molasses blend can provide the solution.
As well as the nutritional value of our products its important to remember that molasses-based liquid have some unique physical characteristics such as stimulating feed intake, reducing feed wastage, reducing sorting and helping to control dust, all of which are important when producing a summer feeding plan.
Feed Efficiency – Key to Maximising Profits this Summer!
With falling milk prices and the price of feed slowly easing back, there is a lot more pressure on profit margins this summer. Forage is the cheapest feed on farm and producers should look to exploit this and increase feed efficiency and digestion in order to make more milk from forage.