New Zealand dairy company Bega Cheese is giving NZ$3 million (€1.4m) in bonus payments to its farmers. The lump sum of two cents a litre, backpaid till last July, is to help farmers with increasing costs as the dry weather continues in the country.

Bega Cheese chairman Barry Irvin says any extra money is quickly eaten up by high costs of feed and fuel. “It’s only just meeting costs where we’d expected to start seeing a recovery,” he says.