In Mamiche bakeries, in the 9th and 10th arrondissements of Paris, their famous pains Au Chocolat and croissants depend on an essential but increasingly scarce ingredient – butter. The usual bakery supplier can no longer guarantee a constant flow of the tourage butter French, a type of laminated butter used to make the puff pastry. Mamiche has sought other suppliers to ensure continuous production of these delights, but this has a cost.
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Butter prices in most of the world remain close to record levels, with no forecast of fall. This is the result of a complex combination of factors – challenges faced by France’s milk producers to New Zealand, changes in the appetite of Asian consumers who drive global demand, and commercial decisions of milk processors to protect their profits.
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The end result is more cost pressure on favorite consumer foods.
“When we need to change supplier, the difference is really visible,” said Robin Orsoni, a Mamiche commercial operator. Other suppliers charge prices 25% to 30% higher, but Mamiche needs to absorb the cost because “we want to make our customers happy, we need the butter.”
About 70% of the world exported in the world comes from two places – Europe and New Zealand. Both began 2025 with historically low stocks, and this scarcity made prices shoot at record levels, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
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The source of pressure can be tracked by 2022, when the price of milk in Europe reached peak due to inflation and high fuel costs, which harshly affected producers, leading milk processors to seek the best way to maximize profits.
The butter is made by removing the cream of raw milk and beating it. After the process, butter and whey left, the latter with “some industrial but relatively limited uses,” explained FAO economist Monika Tothova. Serum is used for cooking, manufacturing other dairy products and animal feed.
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In contrast, “if you make cheese, process all the volume of milk,” said Tothova. Until the by -product of cheese manufacturing, called serum, is in high demand for commercial food and nutrition food manufacturers, or academia enthusiasts to increase protein in the diet.
European Union Dairy Processors have increasingly produced cheese. As a result, the bloc’s butter production has been constantly falling and should reach the lowest level in eight years this season, according to estimates by the US Department of Agriculture.
Milk production itself is also becoming more challenging. In Europe, the size of the herds is decreasing due to financial pressures, and producers face additional risks to their cows, such as the Blue Language virus, said Jose Saiz, dairy market analyst of the expansion agency. Nodular skin disease, which can reduce milk production from infected cows, is also coming to Italy and France.
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Just as butter has fallen into disuse among milk processors, consumers are developing a greater taste for it, especially in Asia.
Global butter consumption is expected to grow 2.7% by 2025, exceeding production, according to USDA. In China, demand has grown 6% in just one year. The use in Taiwan between 2024 and 2025 rose 4%, while in India, the largest consumer worldwide, increased 3%.
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The French bakery network Bakehouse in Hong Kong has taken advantage of the change in the taste of Asian consumers. The annual use of butter of the company is currently about 180 tons, an increase of 96 tons compared to the previous year, after the opening of two new stores, in addition to 180 tons of cream, according to the co -founder Gregoire Michaud.
The company buys only well -established suppliers – New Zealand has a first -rate reputation, but China is not yet good enough, he said.
In New Zealand, which is a major dairy exporter and produces about 2.5% of world milk, butter production has not yet returned to the pre-pound levels, oscillating around 500,000 tons per year since 2020.
As in Paris, the shortage of offer and the high prices of butter forced Hong Kong Bakehouse to exchange three suppliers in a short time – from Australia, to New Zealand and then to Belgium. Now they are potentially looking for a room.
Western consumers are also consuming more butter, which for years has been avoided because they are considered unhealthy while seeking to cut ultra -processed diet foods.
Pura pure block butter purchases in the United Kingdom have grown, said Susie Stannard, leading dairy analyst at UK Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. “Consumers who can pay still buy butter,” she said, but are not immune to price pressure.
At the newly opened Morchella restaurant in Clerkenwell district in London, brown butter and bread that were so popular at the Sister House, Perilla, Newington Green, were replaced by olive oil.
Before the recent price increases, “you would put a lot of butter in the pan to prepare that piece of fish or meat,” said Ben Marks, chief of Kitchens of Perilla. “Now you have to be much smarter.”
End consumer should feel a difference in price
Relief is not expected for consumers anytime soon. Butter prices are also affected by global conflicts, supply chain interruptions and tariff wars that shake all other commodities.
Amid this “very warm market”, Hong Kong’s Bakehouse is prioritizing nearest supplier butter to avoid loss of supply, Michaud said.
Orsoni said the mamiche will absorb the highest cost of butter to keep French products accessible to its customers, but Marks, from Perilla, said it is “inevitable” that consumers face higher prices.
The heat wave seen in Europe in recent weeks can also aggravate the situation. High temperatures can reduce the production of dairy cows, as well as increasing the demand for other products that compete with butter by fat cream taken from milk.
Tennis fans who seek cream to accompany their strawberries while watching Wimbledon, or workers who cool off with ice cream on the city’s squares, “only make butter prices rise,” Stannard said.
