The EU opens its doors to Ukrainian milk. Will its producers be able to make money from this?

Ukraine's western border seems to need to be prepared for protests by Polish farmers again. Wholesale milk prices in Poland have been falling for two months in a row, while Brussels is giving Ukrainian farmers more and more opportunities to export their dairy products to the EU.

"In the second half of September it became clear that the trend (of falling prices) was becoming systemic," note mention analysts from the Infagro agency, which specializes in the analysis of dairy markets. They indicate that "in the coming weeks, a wave of protest sentiments can be expected in Polish farming."

Regarding the export of products, Ukraine has received an incredible expansion of quotas for the entire group of dairy products. While the quota for milk and butter has increased by 50% and 133% respectively, trade in finished (processed) dairy products – yogurts, kefirs, cream, and powdered milk – is completely liberalized. This means that soon, in any Żabka or Lidl, Ukrainian brands like "Galichyna," "Yagotynske," and "Molokiya" will be able to compete with European products.

How did it happen that, amidst the incessant whining of farmers and their lobbyists about the decline in the number of cows and the loss of the taste of naturalness, it suddenly turns out that Ukraine is, if not a dairy titan, then a strong player of European class?

Milk is big money

By 2025, almost all milk (92% or 3.2 million tons) for Ukrainian dairy and cheese factories will come from large dairy farms. Most of them are modern complexes with climate control systems, automated feeding and milking. Some have their own power plants that process waste into biogas, which is then used to generate electricity. There are also farms where cleaning is done by robots, and cows are milked on carousel systems.

Investment in such projects, depending on their complexity, will start from $4,000 per cow. Such farms have at least 500 places, usually 1000 or more. That is, this is a business for dollar millionaires. For example, co-owner of the IT company SoftServe Taras Kitzmey became a partner in the construction of a dairy farm in the Lviv region.

The efficiency of Ukrainian dairy farms is at the level of leading European ones, assures Olena Zupinas, Deputy General Director of the Association of Milk Producers.

Therefore, a modern dairy project brings in considerable income. Interestingly, in all companies that own leading farms, profitability indicators have been growing for the past two years.

Dairy farms in Ukraine "are one of the most profitable and attractive areas for investment in the dairy industry," assures Andriy Tabalov, owner and CEO of PJSC "Yuria". His company's revenue in 2024 was 1.72 billion UAH, and it produces products under the brand "Voloshkove Pole".

The most productive dairy farms – top 10

According to AVM, DSSU, Youcontrol

Achievable cloud quality

However, the profitability of this business critically depends on the quality of the milk. After all, the largest income comes from exports, and for foreign markets, especially the EU, the milk must be of "extra" quality. That is, better than the highest grade.

According to the Association of Milk Producers, in 2020 only 35% of industrial milk in Ukraine was classified as extra grade. They state that milk "from grandma," from small farms, or from "private individuals" with a few cows, can never be extra grade. Even the highest grade is almost unattainable for such milk, according to representatives of large dairy businesses.

The thing is, the basic technology of modern dairy farms is so-called closed milking, where the milk has almost no contact with the environment. From the hermetic milking machine, it flows through milk pipes into special tanks, where it is cooled.

Work on improving the quality of raw milk in the country has been ongoing since 2015, said Iryna Vysotska, coordinator of the "Dairy Module" component of the Quality FOOD Trade Program. In Ukraine, with the support of Switzerland and through the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) and SAFOSO AG, a network of laboratories has been created where any dairy farm can systematically check the quality of its milk.

The result of the work of large businesses and international donors is commendable: as of 2025, 62% of milk in Ukraine is of extra quality. However, this only applies to milk from large farms. The significant improvement in raw material quality has been one of the key arguments used by Ukrainians to expand quotas for dairy trade with the EU.

A place in the market.

Extra-grade milk isn't a magic ticket to anywhere, even in Ukraine. Craft cheesemakers have no reverence for super-pure milk. Natalia Kovach, owner of the Transcarpathian cheesemaking facility "Mamin Syr," keeps 50 of her own Swiss cows and considers their milk significantly better than any store-bought milk. Indeed, the silver award her cheese received at the World Cheese Awards 2024 confirms this.

"You have to experiment, work with different types of milk and find out which one is suitable for certain cheeses. The 'extra-grade' designation doesn't mean much to me as a cheesemaker," Roman Khayetskyi, project manager of "Chyzarnya" (from Fozzy Group), told LIGA.net.

Viktoria Knysh, the owner of the "Jersey" cheese factory, whose cheeses won two silver awards at the World Cheese Awards, prefers milk from Jersey cows from a nearby small farm – and again, she doesn't focus on extra-grade quality. She is satisfied with the positive conclusion of the State Food and Consumer Service laboratory (one of those operating within the "Dairy Module" program, Quality FOOD Trade Program. – Ed.).

Finally, large, industrial farms even have ideological rivals. Farmer and candidate of veterinary sciences Mykhailo Travetskyi believes that free-range grazing and small herds are the only natural way to raise dairy cows. Under these conditions, a domestic cow can produce milk for the owner for 15-20 years. "Record productivity of cows leads to them being effective for five, at most seven years. After that, farms cull them. And that's the end of their lives," says Mykhailo Travetskyi. He knows what he's talking about, having worked as the head of animal husbandry at Astarta and Kernel.

Now he is trying to revive the Ukrainian gray breed of cows. Travetsky's herd already numbers about five dozen head. He doesn't think about export prospects for milk from his cows – there are no problems with sales, and the price is slightly lower than that set by supermarkets. "My buyers have made their choice. They are not interested in "industrial" milk," he says.