Arla Foods, the Swedish dairy group, has launched two new flavour variants for its drinking yoghurt brand, Yoggi Yalla, one of its best-selling dairy products.
Yoggi Yalla was launched in 2001 in Sweden and has already garnered 73 per cent of the national market for drinking yoghurt, a sector which is growing quickly there.
"We know that consumers want new and interesting flavour combinations," said Madeleine Gössner, product manager from the marketing department of Arla's Swedish division. "This is precisely what the two new Yoggi Yalla products offer."
The two new varieties, raspberry-pomegranate-guarana and mango-kombucha, will help secure this position. Mango-kombucha combines the sweet taste of mango with the slightly bitter taste of kombucha, a type of tea which originally comes from China and Russia. Raspberry-pomegranate-guarana is in the same bitter-sweet category, with the guarana giving an added energy boost.
The latest addition to the drinking yoghurt range is just one of a number of developments at Arla in recent weeks. For example, the dairy company recently announced that it was to take on the organic milk market with a new publicity campaign which aims to increase sales of the product in the Danish market - a country where much of the organic milk output is sold simply as 'normal' milk.
The company has also announced that the new production line for its Gaio tagatose artificial sweetener will be tested this month with a view to delivering the first shipments of the sweetener in April. The sweetener is produced by Arla and its partner Nordzucker under licence from US group Spherix - which is taking legal action against the company for failing to begin production earlier.
Arla was granted the licence for tagatose production in 1996, and last year Spherix instituted arbitration proceedings against the company because of the delay in production. The US group has said it will seek damages from Arla if it believes that revenues have been lost as a result of the delay.