Cheese is hotter than ever

We are slowly “getting back to normal” when we talk about our daily operations where we are now able to focus on optimisations on the new tower and other new installed equipment. Likewise, we can address full focus on our many customer projects, as we see a lot of our customers also slowly getting back to normal after almost 1,5 year with COVID-19.  

In the raw material market, we are currently seeing a real impact from COVID-19, where lockdown of the food service sector, restaurants, hotels etc. has caused a smaller output of cheese due to less demand from this sector, leaving less cheese available for the industrial market. This tendency is reinforced by a strong demand for dairy products in China, where large dairy companies have taken the opportunity to sell more dairy powders and making less cheese. Short term, this is affecting cheese prices going up. A general tendency however on the raw material commodity market as well, where prices have exploded lately due to high demands exceeding supplies. Our expectations are that cheese supplies will increase again in the third and fourth quarter as COVID-19 seems to be decreasing in the main cheese manufacturing countries, leaving an expectation that demand and thereby production will increase again.

The demand for Lactosan cheese powder remains strong, and despite equally strong competition, we expect to be able to grow our business in our major markets. Soon we relaunch our NCB and standard range products together with some new concepts, and a new and more interactive webpage. We expect this will give us even more leverage and visibility in the markets in our strive to achieve a worldwide leadership position in cheese powders.

All our people around the world, that being our own sales offices or our valued distributors, are doing a great job keeping Lactosan top of mind at our customers, and we still believe the cheese powder market has significant growth opportunities when it comes to high-quality products. The trend points towards “flexitarians” and vegetarian products, and “the best of two worlds” combining animal and vegetarian products with great taste. We are very well positioned in this market, and therefore we are aiming at making ourselves even more visible for current and potential customers aiming to make great tasting products.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone the very best and hope we in six months’ time can look back at a year that ended “ok” and that COVID-19 has moved to one of the last points on the agenda.

Sincerely

Jørn Frandsen 
CEO, Lactosan