Business

Milk prices could rise by $1 per gallon: experts

Dairy prices are on the move — and this time it’s the US consumer who’s getting milked.

Wholesale prices for milk, cheese and other dairy products hit all-time highs Monday on a double- whammy of soaring global demand and tight supplies at home.

The result: The price of milk in Big Apple supermarkets and elsewhere could rise by as much as a dollar a gallon, according to industry experts.

Nasty weather in the Midwest has put a lid on production in recent months, and California, which produces a fifth of the nation’s milk, is still recovering from a drought that ignited hay prices last year.

To make matters worse, supplies are drying up at home as domestic dairies have stepped up exports to meet surging demand in Asia, according to Aishwarya Govil, an analyst at Rice Dairy LLC in Chicago.

“China is one of the key buyers,” Govil told The Post. “It’s not just cheese, but milk powders that have been in high demand.”

A growing taste for milk among China’s emerging middle class isn’t letting up, even as irregular weather patterns have hit production in other milk-producing countries, analysts say.

At home, that has helped fuel the highest-ever spot-market prices at commodity exchanges. In fact, milk prices have been on a steady climb since mid-2013, economists said.

On Monday, milk spiked to an all-time high of $24.32 a hundredweight, capping a rally that has sent milk prices up more than 35 percent from Dec. 2, when they traded at $17.97.

That’s also about twice the price of milk during the depths of the Great Recession in 2009.

Indeed, experts say an improving economy worldwide is largely responsible for the surging demand.

Apart from grocery shoppers, casualties of the rally include big corporate buyers like Domino’s Pizza and Dean Foods, the nation’s largest milk processor, which warned last month that surprisingly strong prices for raw milk were squeezing its margins.

Chicago-based sandwich chain Potbelly will increase prices to cover inflation from dairy, pork and beef products this year, chief financial officer Charles Talbot said on a Feb. 18 earnings call, Bloomberg reported.

Organic foods producer Annie’s also cited cheese prices last week as part of a “tough commodity-inflation environment.”

Nevertheless, many analysts are optimistic that the rally will be short-lived as the weather improves this spring.

“It’s hard to say it’s going too much higher when you’re at all-time highs,” Govil said.