In the first half of this year Tine sold almost 3,900 tonnes of butter, 500 tonnes more than the same period last year. But despite the 13-percent increase in butter consumption, milk production has risen by only one percent in the same period, newspaper Nationen reports.

“Milk production so far this year has been around what we expected in terms of volume, but the fat content has been somewhat lower than expected,” said Tine communications director Øystein Knoph.

“Consequently, we bought an import quota of 200 tonnes this spring which enables us to supplement Tine butter with foreign butter made to a Norwegian recipe,” he added.

Knoph said Tine was confident it had done enough to meet future demand, but retailers are not yet fully convinced.

Kine Søyland, a spokeswoman for wholesaler NorgesGruppen, said her firm had grappled for years with the problem of insufficient butter deliveries from Tine, which enjoys a near monopoly position in the Norwegian dairy market.

She warned that shortages are likely to occur among some butter products but added she does not expect a full-blown dairy crisis to develop.

Last year’s shortfall was attributed to a mixture of rising demand amid a high-fat diet fad, and a drop in the supply of raw milk after a wet summer led to lower feed production.

Prohibitively high tariffs on the import of butter also made foreign dairies disinclined to enter the Norwegian market.

With tradition calling for seven different types of biscuits to be baked at Christmas, sly racketeers sold the soft gold on the black market while some desperate hobby bakers took to the internet to get their fix from buy-and-sell sites.