Oat milk is going public. Sweden’s Oatly is reportedly considering an IPO at a valuation of as much as $5 billion. Investors include:
✨Oprah Winfrey
✨Jay-Z
✨Natalie Portman
Is this the end of semi-skimmed milk? bloom.bg/2FL3DJ7
The dairy industry appears to be going vegan, too:
🌱Canadian dairy giant Saputo is acquiring a plant-milk business
🌱Arla announced its own oat-milk brand
🌱Danone spent $10 billion in 2017 buying plant-based WhiteWaves Food bloom.bg/2FL3DJ7
Part of this is simply chasing consumer demand.
Seeking a source of tasty fats with a smaller carbon footprint than the cattle industry is a justification for consumers to switch, and self-diagnosed lactose intolerance appears to be on the rise bloom.bg/2FL3DJ7
There’s a better reason for the dairy industry to chase the vegan market, however:
💵Dollars bloom.bg/2FL3DJ7
Only a quarter of the milk produced on farms ends up being sold as a liquid, with the vast majority turned into:
🧀Cheese
🥞Butter
🍼Infant formula
🥛Yoghurt bloom.bg/2FL3DJ7
Those manufactured goods are a far more profitable business for most dairy processors.
Fresh milk requires fiendishly complex supply chains capable of delivering consumers a highly perishable product from living animals bloom.bg/2FL3DJ7
Cheese, butter and other goods last longer, can easily be manufactured on demand and can be heavily branded.
In that way, non-milk dairy products have a lot in common with plant-based milks bloom.bg/2FL3DJ7
🇨🇳In China, plant milks have about a third of the combined market for milk and its alternatives, but it’s declining.
🇺🇸In the U.S., the plant-based share is rising fast to nearly 17% of the combined market bloom.bg/2FL3DJ7
All the growth in the dairy industry these days is in things other than milk. From 2000 to 2018, this is how U.S. consumption changed:
🔺Butter 51%
🔺Cheese 57%
🔺Yogurt 138%
🔻Milk and ice cream saw declines bloom.bg/2FL3DJ7
From that perspective, the dairy industry would be better off if milk-drinking continued to decline and people switched to plant-based alternatives.
So don’t be surprised to see milk producers increasingly going vegan-ish bloom.bg/2FL3DJ7
Just don’t kid yourself that you’re cutting your carbon footprint much by opting for an almond latte.
The amount of milk coming out of cows is still rising -- and it’s the butter on your toast and the cheese on your pizza that’s driving it bloom.bg/2FL3DJ7
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