Australian dairy consumption expected to rise - GAIN

The USDA Foreign Agricultural Service post in Canberra forecasts a 0.4% increase in Australia’s fluid milk consumption for 2025, reaching 2.47 million metric tons (MMT), up slightly from a revised estimate of 2.46 MMT for 2024, according to a recent US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Global Agricultural Information Network (GAIN) report. This marks a reversal of the declining trend over the previous five years, where fluid milk consumption generally dropped by around 1% annually. The shift is primarily due to rapid population growth since the beginning of 2023. Australia’s population growth rate has surged beyond the steady pre-COVID-19 rate of just over 1.5%. From late 2022, the growth rate has consistently exceeded the pre-pandemic average, reaching an annualised rate of approximately 2.3% by the first quarter of 2024. The majority of this growth is due to high immigration, although the federal government has since implemented measures to slow the immigration rate. However, the ...