The US and the EU are two of the largest exporters of whey and milk proteins, which is a reason to expect their prices to keep each other honest in third markets. They have stopped moving together.
WPC80 instant closed the week of 2 September at a 14% premium in Europe over the US benchmark. MPC85 has moved further and faster: the US price sat above the EU as recently as May, by 17% on the monthly average, on the back of nonfat dry milk volatility. Since June the order has reversed, and EU MPC85 now stands 29% above the US. EU MPC85 is up 89% since the start of the year against 46% in the US.
What a price gap has to clear
A gap is not yet a margin. Landing US protein in Rotterdam means paying the EU import duty and the ocean freight on top of the US price, and the trade only works on what is left after both.
The two products sit under different customs codes. WPC80 is normally classified as milk albumin under CN 3502 20 91, where the duty is a fixed €123.50 per 100 kg. Because it is a fixed amount, its weight falls as prices rise: about 13% of the US WPC80 price a year ago, about 5% today. MPC above 85% protein on dry matter falls under CN 3504 00 10, where the duty is 3.4% of value. Freight is the smaller line. On the Upply benchmark for a 40ft dry container from New Orleans to Rotterdam, at 21 tonnes of bagged powder per container, it works out at roughly 1% of product value, though the lane is up 40% on the quarter.
On those inputs, US MPC85 needs an EU premium of about 5% before landed cost matches the EU benchmark, and WPC80 needs about 6%. Both premiums are now more than twice that. This excludes processing, inland handling and insurance, and any real shipment adds its own terms, financing and specification.
The last time the gap held open
When prices have diverged before, product found its way from one origin to the other. US WPC80 exports to the EU28 reached 22.5 million pounds in 2025, up 44% on 2024 and rising from 8% to 11% of all US shipments in the category. The Netherlands and Belgium remain the main entry ports, and Germany is the new one, going from 57 tonnes to 1,414 tonnes.
Reported trade data runs only to June, and the first half of 2026 shows 7.5 million pounds against 10.4 million a year earlier. Nearly all of that drop is the UK, where volumes all but stopped, while flows into the EU itself were roughly flat. The WPC80 spread only widened from April and the MPC85 spread from June, and export contracts run weeks to months ahead of shipment, so a larger flow would show up in the second-half data if the gap holds.
Both windows have now been open since June, with more room on MPC85 than on WPC80. Meanwhile on the CME, butter and cheese both fell just shy of 1% on the week as production keeps running above last year, while dry whey added a cent to close at $0.7500 per pound.
