NATIONAL Foods is on the hunt for more milk from its contracted Tasmanian farmers, after most of its 90 island-state suppliers refused to sign up to the company's offer of 33c a litre.

National Foods corporate affairs general manager Geoff Lynch would not say how many suppliers had signed the contracts by the November 30 deadline, but according to Tasmanian media reports the number was as low as five.

The remaining suppliers are pushing for a price per litre matching the cost of year-round production - about 39c/litre.

National Foods has offered farmers 33c/litre base, up to 3.8c/litre in incentives, plus a "one-off" assistance payment of 0.7c/litre, totalling a maximum price of 37.5c/litre.

But farmers have said the maximum milk price would be difficult to achieve.

Mr Lynch said National Foods had begun canvassing its contracted farmers, to see if they could supply more milk.

"We've had a number of suppliers phoning us saying they would like to increase their volumes ... they've been wanting to expand their farms for a while but we haven't had the ability to take more milk," he said.

Mr Lynch said the company had seen "a fair bit of interest" from farmers wanting to switch from other processors to National Foods.

"We're not giving an indication of how many there are or who they are, because we don't want to create a witch hunt," he said.

"But we're pretty satisfied with progress to date."

Mr Lynch said National Foods was still collecting milk from its uncontracted farmers, but would review the situation at the end of this month.

"We're still picking up their milk and paying them according to the contract schedule they've been on, which is about 23c/litre for the November-December period and annualises out at 30.7c/litre," he said.

Mr Lynch said current suppliers who had not signed the contracts by November 30 could still do so.

"The offer is no longer exclusive to them but it's still available to them," he said.

"We're still hoping as many of our current suppliers as possible will sign up.

"We want to rebuild relationships with our suppliers and we hope common sense will prevail."