Waiting for permission from Serbia to transport milk: Ministry and dairies expect purchase to normalize soon

The Ministry of Agriculture and the Lazine Dairy are expected to find out today whether it will be possible to send surplus milk from Montenegro to Serbia for processing and packaging into UHT long-life milk in tetrapacks. This will also determine whether and when the purchase of milk from domestic farmers will be normalized, Vijesti has learned.

Serbia has imposed a ban on milk imports to protect its domestic producers. The Montenegrin Ministry of Agriculture committed at a meeting on Monday to provide a permit for the formal export of milk from Montenegro to Serbia for UHT processing and packaging and later return to Montenegro.

At the meeting, the Ministry committed to covering the costs of transporting and processing the milk, while "Lazine" will provide its packaging for the tetrapak.

The Ministry told "Vijesti" that the Agrobudget for 2026 contains money for the measure of market interventions and purchase of surpluses, and it amounts to 250 thousand euros.

"The Agrobudget includes a measure intended for market interventions in situations where the quantities of certain agricultural production increase. Based on the initiative of the association of producers and processors, the conditions have been met for activating this measure, with the aim of overcoming the current standstill in the purchase and withdrawal of market surpluses of milk. When it comes to the costs of export and processing, they will be defined more precisely in the coming period, within the aforementioned measure and in accordance with the available funds of the Agrobudget, with clearly defined criteria," the Ministry told "Vijesti".

President of the Association of Agriculture and Food Industry of the Chamber of Commerce (PKCG) and director of the "Lazine" dairy Milutin Đuranović He told "Vijesti" that yesterday they had discussions with the Ministry about technical details, but that today they expect whether the authorities in Serbia will allow the temporary export and processing of surplus milk from Montenegro into long-term UHT and later return to Montenegro.

"Processing surplus milk into long-term UHT is one of the options for getting rid of the current surplus. The 'Zora' dairy from Berane used to have its own line for the production and packaging of UHT milk, which went bankrupt, and its equipment was also outdated. The analyses we conducted in the dairy industry show that for this production to be minimally sustainable, at least 40 thousand liters of milk would have to be processed daily. That is more than the current total milk production in Montenegro, and it is impossible to guarantee the sale of such a quantity. So, processing and packaging in Serbia is a good measure for surplus milk that occurs seasonally at the beginning of spring, then during September and October, and partially during December and January due to fasting," Đuranović told "Vijesti".

He expects positive news from the Serbian authorities, so that they can normalize milk purchases as early as May 2. Since Thursday last week, dairies have limited purchases from farmers who produce less than one hundred liters of milk per day, because their cold stores, as well as the cold stores and warehouses of retailers, were full. This has stopped the purchase of milk from around 400 farmers, or small family farms.

When asked how sending surpluses for processing to Serbia would be financed, Đuranović said that there is a measure in the agricultural budget to influence the market and purchase surpluses, and that the Ministry should issue a call for proposals for that measure in the coming days, for which his company will apply.

The Ministry of Agriculture told "Vijesti" that in order to solve the problem in the long term, they recommend further strengthening milk processing capacities through the use of available IPARD funds.

"In the previous period, there was a growth in livestock, primarily thanks to the import of quality pedigree animals and the improvement of genetics, which led to an increase in total milk production. This is precisely an indicator of the success of the measures implemented by the Ministry in the previous period. For this reason, it is necessary to develop processing and marketing capacities in parallel, in order to ensure market stability and the sustainability of domestic production," the Ministry stated.

The call to buy domestically has begun to reduce stocks

The call to buy domestic dairy products, especially yogurt, in order to reduce stocks at dairies and retailers and thus enable the normalization of purchases, yielded some results as stocks began to gradually decrease.

"The average daily milk production of farmers in Montenegro is less than 40 thousand liters. At one point last week, we had a surplus of dairy products in warehouses, mostly yogurt, of about 200 thousand liters. That's why I said that we would get rid of all the surplus in a day and a half if every household bought a liter of yogurt," said Đuranović.

He said that in cooperation with yogurt traders, they reduced their profits to a minimum, and the traders reduced their margins in order to sell their stocks as quickly as possible.

"Both the call to buy domestic and the price reduction have influenced the increase in sales and the gradual reduction of surpluses. I hope that the purchase of domestic, not only milk, but also other agricultural products, will become common among our consumers, because it is very important for the preservation of agriculture and the domestic economy," said Đuranović.