Milk Price War?

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keewee01

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#595496 15-Mar-2012 10:08

scuwp: Consumers have plenty of choice. Even in my local supermarket I can choose between the 'supermarket' brand or a named brand of milk, so I am not sure what all the fuss is about. They both probably come from exactly the same factory however the supermarket brand is significantly cheaper, by around 40%. It always amuses me the customers that grab the 'top shelf' branded products which are right next to the cheaper bottles and then grizzle about the price.

I think I pay around $3:60 for a 2 litre. Certainly not worth my time/petrol to drive 1/2 hour across town to save a couple of bucks at Nosh. Got to watch out for the false economy.

The price of so many basic commodities is exorbitant, never mind milk. A couple of bags of basics rarely comes in under $100 now. Sadly it's cheaper to feed the family at McDonalds.

Yeah - I've started buying supermarket brand milk rather than the "top shelf" stuff.

vexxxboy

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#595521 15-Mar-2012 10:53

just remember that budget milk or similar is just Anchor milk with a different label, so why people pay extra for the same milk is a mystery.

Common sense is not as common as you think.

Lurch

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#595682 15-Mar-2012 16:00

networkn:Tea and breakfast cereal is not nice if you exchange leafy veg for milk! Milkshakes and the like I imagine, would tasty downright nasty and have a horrible consistency!

Don't drink real milk if I can help it. Drink soy milk a lot, although only Pams or Sanitrium branded. The other brands can be very harsh in taste.

Downside to Soy milk is that it doesn't last aslong (once opened) in the fridge as milk, and it's not really an option for cooking. Have tried ;-)

Almond milk is nice, and you can make your own with a food processor and sometime :-) Although can be expensive.

Soy milk is also more expensive $2 for a litre if you shop around. 3 to 4 cartons (4 litres) usually lasts me a week.

The other half and my son drink real milk although he loves either. But can't afford to buy litres and litres of soy milk ;-) 4 year olds!!

Also one is meant to limit their intake of animal fat, so soy is a good option for that. Although each product has it's up's and down's.

MikeyPI

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#595726 15-Mar-2012 17:10

sbiddle:
networkn: Nosh are doing this $1 per litre milk promotion which is excellent, and when it was announced, it seemed inevitable that a price war would break out with Supermarkets leading the way! Problem is nothing really has worked and no-one except Nosh has dropped their prices to that level.

I am wondering how to apply pressure to supermarkets to get them to drop prices as well, surely in the quantities they are talking about it wouldn't be out of reach to get pretty close to Nosh (Who is taking a loss on every litre if you believe them). I have it on reasonable authority they had a record month regardless.

How does one apply pressure in these situations?

Nosh are a small player who sell plenty of other high margin products in their stores to compensate for selling milk as a loss leader. There is no way a supermarket could sustain the losses that Nosh are absorbing if it was scaled.

Not if they continued to use alcohol as a loss leader though. If they dropped that, they could afford it easily..

MikeyPI

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#595730 15-Mar-2012 17:17

Lurch:
networkn:Tea and breakfast cereal is not nice if you exchange leafy veg for milk! Milkshakes and the like I imagine, would tasty downright nasty and have a horrible consistency!

Don't drink real milk if I can help it. Drink soy milk a lot, although only Pams or Sanitrium branded. The other brands can be very harsh in taste.

Downside to Soy milk is that it doesn't last aslong (once opened) in the fridge as milk, and it's not really an option for cooking. Have tried ;-)

Almond milk is nice, and you can make your own with a food processor and sometime :-) Although can be expensive.

Soy milk is also more expensive $2 for a litre if you shop around. 3 to 4 cartons (4 litres) usually lasts me a week.

The other half and my son drink real milk although he loves either. But can't afford to buy litres and litres of soy milk ;-) 4 year olds!!

Also one is meant to limit their intake of animal fat, so soy is a good option for that. Although each product has it's up's and down's.

Downside of soy ( bean juice) is the phytoestrogens acting like estrogen..

KoolKiwiNZ

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#595860 15-Mar-2012 22:07

If you really want to save money, give milk powder a try. :)

The process for making milk powder these days has improved so much that I can't really tell the difference anymore. Anchor Trim Milk Powder is the same as what you get in a bottle, but with the additional spray evaporation process to remove the water content. When you reconstitute it (and leave it in the fridge for an hour before use), it really is pretty much just the same.

Anchor even say: "Our Anchor Milk powder is the same deliciously fresh milk dried so you can make up what you need, when you need it."

The funny thing is that even though there appears to be additional manufacturing steps to make the Milk Powder, it is cheaper to buy than milk in the bottle. A 1KG bag of Anchor Trim Milk Powder can be purchased for $11.99 if you shop around, which makes 10 litres or more of green top Trim Milk (so $1.20 per litre).

I only discovered this after buying a Bread Maker. Since I was buying milk powder and using just a couple of tablespoons for each loaf of bread, I decided to use up the packet for making milk as well. The combined savings of making your own Bread and Milk, will pay back my Panasonic Bread Maker in 6 months.

I even use the reconstituted milk when steaming the milk froth in my Latte machine and it works just the same.

Interested to hear if anyone else has given this a try?

Ragnor

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#595925 16-Mar-2012 01:10

KoolKiwiNZ:

The funny thing is that even though there appears to be additional manufacturing steps to make the Milk Powder, it is cheaper to buy than milk in the bottle. A 1KG bag of Anchor Trim Milk Powder can be purchased for $11.99 if you shop around, which makes 10 litres or more of green top Trim Milk (so $1.20 per litre).

You'll probably find the milk comes out of the cow, gets turned into powder.. then later gets turned back into the "fresh milk" you see in the supermarket and that the difference between basic and brand name is non existent and the difference between blue/light blue/green top is the ratio of powder to water.

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rhy7s

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#596095 16-Mar-2012 13:09

MikeyPI:

Downside of soy ( bean juice) is the phytoestrogens acting like estrogen..

This tends to be a bit overstated as an issue.

Batman

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#596392 17-Mar-2012 10:17

rhy7s:
MikeyPI:

Downside of soy ( bean juice) is the phytoestrogens acting like estrogen..

This tends to be a bit overstated as an issue.

what about recently pregnany cows full to the eyeballs with lady cow hormones???

DrCheese

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#596435 17-Mar-2012 11:30

As well as being a part-time geek, I'm a full-time dairy scientist. I'll attempt to clear up the misconceptions written in this thread.

A case could be made for lowering the price of milk, but this is dictated by the world market, not by the wishes of NZ consumers. Farmers are currently paid $6.35 per kg of milk solids (roughly 80 cents per litre) so the rest of the price is made up by processing, transportation, marketing, distribution, and everyone's cut along the way.

Non-branded milk is the same as branded milk. It's a marketing strategy to price the same product at differently levels to raise sales. The dairy companies rely on wealthy milk snobs (like me) to purchase Anchor branded milk.

Petrol and cola are indeed cheaper than milk. I'm not sure I need to comment further on this as the comparison is ridiculous.

I'm not sure what is meant by the reference to "genuine mozzarella blend". It's clearly not milk. NZ doesn't make mozzarella on a large scale, only "pizza cheese" which is not genuine at all.

The amount of calcium in a food product is only part of the story. The calcium needs to be in a bioavailable form (which is it in milk to a high degree), and it needs to be at consumed along with phosphorus (also present in milk) at the correct ratio. Indeed, leafy plants contains calcium at a high level and in the correct ratio with phosphorus, but the bioavailability is less, due in part to complexation with the oxalate present in the leaves. This is not a problem with milk.

Milk powder is not reconstituted and sold as fresh milk in the supermarket. You would notice the taste difference immediately.

Cheers,

David.

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#596439 17-Mar-2012 11:51

Awesome thanks!

Any comments on the hormones?

rhy7s

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#596484 17-Mar-2012 14:55

DrCheese:
The amount of calcium in a food product is only part of the story. The calcium needs to be in a bioavailable form (which is it in milk to a high degree), and it needs to be at consumed along with phosphorus (also present in milk) at the correct ratio. Indeed, leafy plants contains calcium at a high level and in the correct ratio with phosphorus, but the bioavailability is less, due in part to complexation with the oxalate present in the leaves. This is not a problem with milk.

You don't have to get calcium from spinach (which seems to often be the only green mentioned in debates on this issue) if oxalates are a problem for you. For example, kale is fairly low in oxalates, has 135mg calcium per 100g (and 56mg of phosphorus) while being fairly low in oxalic acid vs 3.25% milkfat milk at 113g of calcium and 84 mg of phosphorus. There are plenty of benefits to foods containing oxalates, and oxalate content shouldn't preclude the vast majority of people from consuming those foods.

DrCheese

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#596503 17-Mar-2012 16:39

rhy7s:
DrCheese:
The amount of calcium in a food product is only part of the story. The calcium needs to be in a bioavailable form (which is it in milk to a high degree), and it needs to be at consumed along with phosphorus (also present in milk) at the correct ratio. Indeed, leafy plants contains calcium at a high level and in the correct ratio with phosphorus, but the bioavailability is less, due in part to complexation with the oxalate present in the leaves. This is not a problem with milk.

You don't have to get calcium from spinach (which seems to often be the only green mentioned in debates on this issue) if oxalates are a problem for you. For example, kale is fairly low in oxalates, has 135mg calcium per 100g (and 56mg of phosphorus) while being fairly low in oxalic acid vs 3.25% milkfat milk at 113g of calcium and 84 mg of phosphorus. There are plenty of benefits to foods containing oxalates, and oxalate content shouldn't preclude the vast majority of people from consuming those foods.

The issue is one of bioavailability, not oxalate per se. Milk is one of the best sources of bioavailable calcium.

David.

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