The company knew from its milk flow monitoring that a prominent peak would not now appear even though excessive rainfall that caused soil and pasture damage from cow trampling had eased in many districts and sunshine hours and temperatures were rising.
Milk collection in September was 2% lower than for the same month in 2016 and during October the expected build to a normal peak had not happened.
The trend in the milk collection graph published in the October Global Dairy Update, although three weeks behind, illustrated that flat peak expectation as the line dipped below last year.
Daily collection was not expected to exceed 80 million litres, despite Fonterra having the processing capacity to handle up to 95m litres during the spring peak.
Capacity was expanded by 10% after the 2013-14 season when Fonterra had to dump waste streams and make lower-value products, at a lost opportunity cost of $1 billion.
The biggest single-site expansion was at Lichfield, South Waikato, where a new drier could take more than 4m litres a day.
Fonterra’s revised seasonal forecast was now 1540m kilograms of milksolids, an increase of only 1% on last season and a revision of minus 2.2% on the prior forecast of 1575m.
“The full season forecast is dependent on improved conditions through the rest of the season,” the update warned.
Season-to-date collection across NZ to the end of September was down 1% compared with the previous year, and 2% behind in the South Island, despite having started strongly in June and July.
Less than 20% of the seasonal forecast had been collected in the four months to the end of September.
The collection by Fonterra Australia, by contrast, had risen by 23% in the first three months of its season, which began on July 1.
New suppliers plus favourable seasonal conditions, strong pasture growth and reasonable feed input costs had all combined for growth, the monthly update said.
NZ dairy export volumes in the 12 months to the end of July were steady on the previous corresponding period.
Fluid, fresh dairy, whole milk powder and cheese contributed to a 100,000 tonne increase in those products, about 3% higher than the year before.
That was balanced by a fall in anhydrous milk fat, butter, skim milk powder and casein.
Exports from Europe were up 4% or 192,000 tonnes, concentrated on cheese, infant formula, lactose and SMP.
Exports from the United States were up 14% or 274,000 tonnes with significant growth across all categories, especially SMP, whey powder and cheese.
Imports during the past year were up 9% in Latin America, Asia and China and while the pace of growth had slowed in the first two regions it had accelerated in China, rising 28% in August.
Latin American countries favoured SMP and cheese, Asian countries SMP, fluid dairy and cheese while in China the surge had been across all categories, especially infant formula, WMP and whey.
