Market share of Hungarian milk declines

Since accession to the EU, Hungarian milk production has changed markedly. While milk processing enterprises purchased 1.550 billion litres in 2004, this figure was only 1,370 billion litres in 2005.
Sales of milk and milk products from domestic production continued to decline last year by a further 6 per cent as a result of growing imports. The market share of Hungarian products has fallen in practically all categories of milk products. Total sales of milk, cheese and cottage cheese from domestic production and expressed as milk equivalent show a decline of 10 per cent. At the same time, imports show a drastic increase, for example a thirteen fold expansion in milk and cream.
Hungarian cheese export exceeded 20.000 tons last year. (Ten litres of milk is used to make one kilo of cheese.) Hungarian cheese is marketed even in Arab countries and the US, as well as in neighbouring countries. Import also continued to grow this year with a quantity of over 12,600 tons in the first half of the year. This amount represents 35 per cent of the market. Over 100 million kilos of unprocessed milk was exported in 2005, which resulted in the value of export exceeding that of 2003 by 28 per cent.