Dairy farmers are continuing to blockade a milk processing plant in protest at low milk prices.

Members of Farmers for Action (FFA) say they will carry on demonstrating outside the factory until big supermarkets and processors start paying more for their produce.

A group gathered outside Arla Foods, in Sheffield Park, near Uckfield, on Friday at 2am.

Pete Parkes, 49, the FFA's regional co-ordinator, said: "We managed to stop about 15 or 16 lorries from getting out until the police moved us on at 4.30am.

"They will have had a delivery schedule so hopefully we delayed that."

There have been nationwide FFA protests about the price of milk for the last few months following warnings that the dairy industry is in crisis.

The number of Sussex farmers producing milk has almost halved in the past decade and a recent report for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) warned Britain was likely to fall short of its national milk quota by one billion litres in 2007/08.

Farmers sell their milk to the processors, either direct or through a farmers co-operative, and they then sell it on to the retailers.

The average price paid by processors for a litre of milk is 18p but farmers say it costs between 17p and 23p just to produce a litre, leaving them no room for profit.

A spokeswoman for Arla said: "The protest caused us minimal disruption. We actually pay one of the highest milk prices in the country.

"The majority of the farmers protesting sell to us through a co-operative and the co-op pays them less than they would get if they sold to us directly."