German company Müller has introduced a new initiative to support UK dairy farmers build businesses for the future.

As part of its new initiative, the company has increased its farm gate milk price by £1.31ppl, which will be effective from 1 September, raising its standard litre price to £29.00ppl.

The company has also confirmed plans to introduce the Müller Direct Futures Contract option for farmers, which will provide them with an opportunity to agree on a monthly price for up to 25% of their milk volume, for 12 months in advance.

In order to help farmers to improve their business, the dairy firm will offer valuable data, welfare tools and benchmarking through their new Müller Farm Insight service.

The new Müller Direct involves 700 of the company’s 1,800 farmer suppliers, who do not belong to groups that are aligned to major supermarket customers.

Müller agriculture director Rob Hutchison said: “There is a lot of uncertainty out there but we are optimistic. Britain remains one of the best places in the world to produce milk, and Müller is investing heavily to ensure that consumers will be able to buy more and more dairy products made in Britain with milk from British farmers.

“We want to work with farmers to realise our shared ambitions as the basis of a progressive industry with the security and confidence to invest. The steps we are outlining today are early measures, which signal our intent.”

The company further added that it has already invested £100m into its UK dairy network in order to build an additional £700m worth of sales of dairy products made with British milk by 2020.