Speaking from an international crisis dairy summit in London earlier this week, which was attended by a selection of the key decision makers from the world's major dairy processing businesses, Dobbin said that there was considerable uncertainty on just when dairy markets would start to recover with significant levels of powder, cheese and butter stock overhanging the global market.
He added that no one really knows just how much stock of dairy product had built up around the world and this made predicting future market trends a very inexact science.
"While we know the exact amounts of product now in EU intervention stores, it's anyone's guess as to what actual tonnages remain in private hands," he further explained.
"Global milk supply is tightening with New Zealand effectively now out of the market until the autumn and production in the United States has been sharply scaled back. Locally, the bad weather has reduced the level of peak milk supplies. All of this is positive up to a point. However, it won't be that long before Fonterra is back in the market. So the key questions to be answered moving forward are: how much milk will New Zealand produce over their next season and will Fonterra continue to be a 'soft seller' in the market?
"Analysts that I have been speaking to this week feel that the rest of 2009 will be challenging for the international dairy sector and it may well be next year before output and demand come more into balance."
Significantly, David Dobbin went on to confirm that sizeable volumes of raw milk and cream are coming into Northern and Southern Ireland from Great Britain at the present time.
"Westbury is full and on given days there is insufficient available capacity to handle all of the available milk in GB. Distressed milk can be bought in GB at prices as low as 14 pence per litre this week," he stressed.
"All the Dale Farm plants are working flat out, processing local milk at the present time, although we have bought small volumes of GB cream to help clear the market.
"There has been a lot of speculation in the farming media over recent weeks about the potential opportunity to sell Northern Ireland milk into Britain this Autumn and Winter and the boost this could give producer prices. The stark reality is that a shortfall in GB milk supplies this year is extremely unlikely. This is a direct consequence of the decision to stand down a number of processing plants and the difficulties being experienced by Dairy Farmers of Britain.
"However, our challenge is to find the best possible home for all of the milk we produce locally. And making knee jerk changes to our auction system is not the solution. We need to improve the basket of products and outlets that the milk sold at the auction is going into. The United Board has made it clear that it will take whatever decisions are required to deliver the best outcome for our farmer shareholders.
"Some people have been calling for British buyers to have the opportunity of sourcing milk directly from the auction. Unfortunately there is no queue of GB buyers at United's or Dale Farm's door and that is likely to remain the case for the rest of 2009. But if opportunities were to arise we will actively respond."
United's chief executive then pointed out that it can cost up to 3 pence per litre or more to export raw milk across the Irish Sea.
"A more effective way of achieving the same objective is to increase our sales of NI dairy produce into GB supermarkets. Putting cheese, for example, onto British retail shop shelves can cost as little as 0.3 pence per litre on a milk equivalent basis. Dale Farm is starting to deliver on this objective courtesy of the recent bulk cheese supply contract we have secured with Tesco, and naturally we want to grow this for the future. Selling into container loads of cheese into commodity markets only delivers a similar return to powder and will not deliver a competitive milk price. The UK retail sector offers a much better return for our milk. This is why it is important to ensure that our products carry the Red Tractor symbol and meet the same quality standard as our competitors."
Responding for the first time to the defections from United by a number of farmer shareholders, David Dobbin readily admitted that the co-op had not been paying the highest producer milk price in Northern Ireland over recent months. He then referred to the €120 million spent by co-ops in the Republic of Ireland over the last year to bolster producer milk prices.
"This is not sustainable," he stressed.
"In our own case, United's auction prices have moved up over the last couple of months while other prices are moving down. And this will be reflected in our own producer prices moving forward. United's objective is to provide a long term future for our farmers shareholders, and a certain home for all their milk at a competitive milk price. We will do whatever it takes to meet these objectives and have already helped deliver export refunds, increased our processing capacity and are developing our GB customer base for NI produced products. We are also committed to working with producers to take costs out of the supply chain and meet their requirements in the most efficient way possible."
David Dobbin concluded: "Our Co-op is owned and run by local dairy farmers who are experiencing first hand the considerable strain that dairy farmers are under. We know what farmers want to see happen and that is driving our decisions and actions at present. Thankfully there has been some relief in recent weeks with the costs of fertilizer, feed, borrowing and energy at last starting to come down. This however does not take away from the challenge to get our farmers' milk into better products and market outlets."