In August 2025, the wholesale price of butter in Ukraine was 400 UAH per kilogram. By early December, it had already dropped to 250 UAH. That's minus 37.5% in four months. According to industry agency Infagro and the Dairy News Today platform, warehouses have accumulated approximately 10,000 tons of unsold products.
This is not a local anomaly — it is an echo of global milk overproduction that has hit Ukraine at a moment when it has already lost key export channels.
How the bottleneck arose
Until mid-2025, the situation was the opposite: excessive exports were pulling prices up, and producers were increasing volumes. When the European market cooled — demand fell, the duty-free quota turned out to be partially exhausted — goods remained at home. Production continued to grow by inertia, while sales sharply contracted.
In parallel, a threat emerged from another direction: according to reNews, against the backdrop of falling global prices, Ukrainian processors fear the appearance of cheaper imported butter that could displace domestic products from supermarket shelves.
Global context: Europe is also in the red
At the latest Global Dairy Trade auctions, the price index fell by 4.3%, and butter quotations fell by 12.4% in a single auction. According to analysts at Foodcom, Europe found itself in a particularly difficult situation: milk surplus, weak consumer demand, and an unfavorable dollar-to-euro exchange rate simultaneously limited both domestic sales and exports.
"The price bubble burst, and the dairy sector found itself in a completely new reality where competitive pressure and geopolitical risks play a key role."
Foodcom Global Butter Market Report, 2025
Who pays the real price
The fall in wholesale prices pulled down purchase prices for raw milk. According to Dairy News Today, approximately 40% of Ukrainian dairy farms risk becoming unprofitable. For the consumer, cheaper butter is a plus. For a farm that is already operating at break-even, the next price cut could mean closure.
- Wholesale butter price: fell from 400 to 250 UAH/kg (August–December 2025)
- Warehouse stock: ~10,000 tons
- At risk of unprofitability: approximately 40% of milk producers
- Global market: GDT index minus 4.3%, butter minus 12.4% in the latest auction
Domestic demand picked up amid sales and lower prices — but this is insufficient to clear 10,000 tons. The scale of the gap between production and sales has not yet narrowed.
If by the end of the first quarter of 2026 purchase prices for milk do not stabilize at least at the cost of production level, some small and medium-sized farms will simply cease operations — and then the next price wave will go up, but there will be less Ukrainian butter on store shelves.
