We also have our weekly look at the global dairy market with INTL FCStone’s Liam Fenton.
Three trends in dairy for 2019
Dustin Boughton, procurement, at Australian and New Zealand dairy company Maxum Foods, has put together three emerging trends he sees in the dairy industry currently.
Gourmet butters
Boughton said flavored butters will gain momentum in 2019.
His observation is that there are now sweet and savory flavored butters such as honey, pistachio, jalapeno, lemon zest, pumpkin seed and even seaweed flavored butters.
Boughton said there will be food companies answering consumer demands and providing packaged flavored butters sold at retail for convenience.
Coffee. And cheese?
First it was butter coffee, commonly referred to as ‘bulletproof coffee’ and now cheese coffee is the latest fad baristas all over the world are discovering, Boughton added.
“Cheese in coffee has a similar texture to marshmallows in hot chocolate, the cubes of cheese float to the top and absorb the coffee developing a squeaky texture,” Boughton said.
“It doesn’t stop there though; cheese tea is also a trend which we expect will become mainstream by the end of the year. The cheese tea trend started in Asia, then moved to the US and will finally hit Aussie shores in a big way this year. Cheese tea is usually served with either green or black tea and topped with a thick layer of salted cream cheese. As the cheese melts on top it forms a similar texture to melted ice cream with a salty tang.”
Protein
The protein trend has taken many food categories by storm, but Boughton believes the dairy category presents numerous opportunities to satisfy protein savvy customers.
He said the trend includes high-protein yogurts, ice cream and convenient snack products that fit into the ‘on-the-go lifestyle.’
New dairy proteins make formulating protein-fortified products even easier.
“We’re now seeing a completely new category for protein emerging because a form of whey protein which can function in clear beverages is now available. Consequently, ‘Protein Waters’ is a category which is growing at a rapid rate.”
Furthermore, consumers are becoming more aware of the importance of gut health and the benefits of the fermentation process. Nutritional ingredient companies have been quick to respond to this trend and are now offering a whey protein isolate with prebiotic-promoting properties, tapping into the interest in the gut microbiome, he added.
Maxum Foods is one of Australia and New Zealand’s suppliers of dairy ingredients to the human health and nutrition and the animal nutrition industries. The company specializes in supplying medium to large-scale food manufacturers with dairy ingredients such as milk powders, cheese and butter.
‘CowAlert for Researchers’ set to transform at global level
IceRobotics, the Edinburgh-based cow behavior company, has launched a bespoke application which, for the first time, offers the agri-research market the ability to access, control and analyze unparalleled amounts of data.
Already being trialled in Europe, the US and New Zealand, ‘CowAlert for Researchers’ offers a real-time data gathering and analysis service. It scales up the power of CowAlert’s established monitoring and alerting modules, enabling researchers to control and analyze their own data or combine it with data from a large number of commercial farms.
IceRobotics describes the product as the ‘single solution for daily cow monitoring and research’, offering researchers a less labor-intensive monitoring system that can be tailored to their own specific requirements.
One feature of CowAlert for Researchers is that it enables researchers to control the data collated by CowAlert and export it out of their own system, allowing for data merging and larger scale statistical analysis.
CowAlert’s technology has been available commercially to farmers for seven years, and uses a unique rear leg-based sensor to continually monitor the health, lameness and fertility of each animal. It then alerts the farmer to any potential issues, enhancing health and productivity through improved decision making.
The launch of CowAlert for Researchers takes the product to a new level, giving the research community access to the hours of data already stored in the CowAlert cloud, which they can analyze in their own way.
Catherine Malcolm, research sales and support, IceRobotics, said, “This system is effectively transforming the way dairy research is done. With the ability to export and analyze large volumes of data, it makes the job of large-scale dairy research much easier and more efficient, in essence it offers vast amounts of useful data at the press of a button - at any time and in any place.
“Having worked at the forefront of dairy research for over 15 years, we are very excited about this new product and we are in discussions with many of the world’s leading research institutions who are keen to explore how CowAlert for Researchers can help them achieve their goals.
“We are committed to providing monitoring solutions which improve livestock wellbeing, whilst helping farmers and researchers to make better decisions with useful, timely data. We look forward to working with researchers across the globe as we continue to better understand livestock behavior and create a more sustainable dairy industry.”
