Milk for Farmers cheddar cheese will be priced at a retail premium of 34p a pack above its standard Morrisons cheddar price to deliver the equivalent of 10p a litre back to farmers who supply the milk.
The move follows the supermarket’s announcement earlier this week that it would create a new brand of milk, Morrisons ‘Milk for Farmers’, for which 10p a litre would go back to farmers which supplied Arla, the retailer’s fresh milk supplier.
Morrisons said the latest launch would do the same for the cheese supply as the earlier announcement about a 10p premium paid to farmers for its Milk for Farmers brand to be launched in the autumn had done for the fresh milk chain.
‘Increase our offer’
In a statement accompanying the latest announcement, Morrisons said: “We are also pleased to announce that we are going to increase our offer to our processors for the liquid milk element of our processed fresh milk to a minimum price of 26p a litre from later this month and through the winter.
“This month, we will continue discussions with our cheese processor about other initiatives that will help their dairy farmers.
“We hope that this offer along with the other initiatives we have announced this week will help our suppliers to better support British dairy farmers.”
It is yet to be seen how the latest news from Morrisons will be received by the dairy sector.
Its original announcement earlier this week on milk was seen in some quarters as “tokenism”. It was effectively trumped by today’s announcement from Asda that it would be paying Arla 28p a litre for all fresh milk sold in store, while not increasing the price it charged consumers.