Thread by @opinion

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