Market Insights

A market perspective
on yoghurt production
Global trends, a market case study and key factors when
choosing a processing partner.
 Introduction

How do we grow our business? What dairy category could we

expand into and would include quick wins? How can we make
our main raw material – milk – more profitable? When running
a dairy, there are so many questions you ask yourself daily and
would like answers to.

One way to expand your operations is to look for new

opportunities in a specific category in your own market. With
this market insights report, we would like to share some of our
knowledge about the yoghurt category and its possibilities. We
have put together an easy-to-read trend report, a case study of
a specific market (in this case Switzerland) and some key points
to consider when choosing a processing partner. In the report,
three of our Swiss customers share their views on why they have
chosen Tetra Pak as their long-time partner.

We hope that you find this market insights report inspiring and
energising. Don’t hesitate to contact your nearest Tetra Pak
representative to discover how we can support you to become
even more successful.

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Content Page
Global Yoghurt trends 4
6 trends shaping the growing yoghurt market

Market Touchdown: Switzerland 10

Local production for local consumers

A reliable processing partner 16

A responsive partner is key to successful yoghurt production

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Global yoghurt trends

6 trends shaping the

growing yoghurt
market
As white milk consumption is decreasing worldwide, the
dairy industry’s response is to develop premium, value-added
products, such as yoghurt. Trends are continuously changing and
reflect today’s ever-shifting consumption patterns. Here are six
prominent trends in today’s yoghurt market.

In ancient India, yoghurt and honey in
combination was known as “the food of
the gods.” No wonder that this fermented
dairy product can today be found in such
a wide variety and is popular all over the
world. High- or low-fat yoghurt, Greek-
style, protein-enriched, full of fruit bits
or with probiotics. Stirred, set, drink,
concentrated or ambient – yoghurt is
produced in different ways and varies
greatly across the globe.
often as a drink. In India and Pakistan, it’s
primarily used as a cooking ingredient.
Whatever your preferred yoghurt product
is, you’re not alone in enjoying milk that
has been fermented with bacterial culture.
The global yoghurt market is forecasted to
grow by 26.08 billion dollars between 2019
and 2023, growing at an average rate of
5.36 % per year, according to British market
research firm Technavio.

Yoghurt varies not only in taste and type

but also in terms of when and how people
consume it. In Europe and North America,
yoghurt is eaten mainly for breakfast or as
a snack. In Asian markets, such as China,
it’s consumed on the go or as a snack,

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26.08
Forecasted to grow by

billion dollars

5
Global yoghurt trends

Six trends are recognizable in today’s

landscape of yoghurt consumption:

1. Immunity boosting.
Consumers are learning more and more about the major impact
our digestive system has on our overall health. Yoghurt is one of the
best sources of friendly bacteria that can improve our gut health.
That’s why consumers are looking for functional ingredients such
as probiotics and fibre when scanning the cultured dairy shelves for
products with specific nutritional benefits.

2. Healthier diet.
In our stressful everyday life, it’s all but too easy to skip physical
activities and fall for the fast-food concept of easily available energy-
dense meals, high in fat and sugars. But this lifestyle has led to a
pandemic. Worldwide, obesity has nearly tripled since 1975, according
to the World Health Organization. As more people are becoming
aware of their weight issues, interest in fermented foods is rising.
Consumers are including sports yoghurts, fat-free and high-protein
yoghurts as part of a healthier diet.

3. Clean label products.

There is no general agreement on what a clean label yoghurt actually
is. For yoghurt, the cleanest label possible would simply include milk
and starter culture. Consumers tend to appreciate a product with a
short list of ingredients, as it’s perceived as fresh, natural and healthy.
That’s why there is an increasing demand for clean label products –
natural yoghurt with fewer additives, for instance, no added sugar or
stabilizers.

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7
Global yoghurt trends

4. Plant-based yoghurt-style products.

Yoghurt-style product is a category driven by eaters that seek non-
dairy alternatives, either because of health issues such as lactose
intolerance or due to environmental concerns. Non-dairy yoghurt-
style products are often based on oats, soybeans, almonds or coconut.
The United States and the United Kingdom are in the forefront when
it comes to plant-based yoghurt-style products, followed by France
and Italy, according to market research firm Euromonitor.

5. Responsible consumption.
The modern consumer is more aware of what she consumes, and that
her consumption affects both our planet and our health. A responsible
consumer strives to eat products that have a low environmental
impact, prefers locally made products, and products manufactured
with respect to certain social norms and working conditions. This trend
works in favour of local dairies but also producers that have started to
include dairy-free products in their range.

6. Indulgence and experience.

Indulgence and experience. Food can be both comforting and joyful.
There is an increasing demand for yoghurt products that satisfy the
consumer’s craving for a treat. It could well be a creamy and viscous
yoghurt dessert or an exotic, unusual flavour bringing a new eating
experience to the table.

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 Germany

1053
mioKg
France

882
Spain

703
UK

630
Russia

584
Italy

460
Germany

329
Netherlands

303
Poland

268
Sweden

196
Bulgaria

Czech Republic

133 120
Switzerland

Romania

Belgium

Serbia

111 108 106 87

Portugal

87
Greece

83
81
Finland
Top 20 markets for yoghurt in Europe

Denmark

73

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10
Market Touchdown: Switzerland
Local production for
local consumers
The Swiss love to eat their creamy yoghurt for breakfast. They prefer
the natural type – and that it’s produced locally, where they live.
The Swiss eat a lot of dairy products
and, of course, that includes yoghurt.
Swiss yoghurt is eaten for breakfast or
as a snack. For the most part it’s stirred,
creamy and sweet. In fact, if you Google
stirred yoghurt, it often comes up as
Swiss yoghurt. It can be found in lots of
flavours, from plain yoghurt to various
fruits. However, some types such as coffee,
chocolate and mocha are set types of
yoghurt. Two trends are clearly visible
when we talk to three Swiss dairies:
responsible consumption and clean label
products, even if other trends are growing.
Local is good
First, we see that consumers prefer
locally produced yoghurt. The reasons
are threefold. One is tradition; people
love their fresh, stir-type yoghurt, it’s
part of the Swiss food culture. Secondly,
consumers want to support their local
producer, knowing that it brings jobs to
the region. Thirdly, a modern consumer is
a responsible consumer. She knows that
locally produced food has a comparatively
low environmental impact.
The Swiss dairy milk market is dominated
by three big players: Emmi, Cremo and
Migros (Elsa-Mifroma), followed by a
number of medium and small dairies,
most of them with a local sales focus.
The dairy Puracenter is a small dairy
in the mountain resort Lenzerheide, in
the southeast of Switzerland. The dairy
produces 55 tonnes of yoghurt annually.
It operates nine SPAR retail stores in the
region as local suppliers for daily shopping
and distributes its products to other
retailers and the Food Service business.
“We deliver a large part of our yoghurt in
2.5 kg and 5 kg units to local hotels and
restaurants. Most of it is consumed for
breakfast,” says Carlo Wasescha, Dairy
Division Manager of Puracenter.
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Market Touchdown: Switzerland
“We produce yoghurt for the
local market, within a radius
of 50 km from our dairy. ”
Molkerei Davos is another of Switzerland’s
smaller dairies, producing 70 tonnes of
yoghurt per year in central Davos in the
eastern part of Switzerland. “We produce
yoghurt for the local market, within a
radius of 50 km from our dairy,” says
Dietmar Nitsche, Production Manager
at Molkerei Davos. The dairy is very busy
during the ski season between December
and April, delivering yoghurt to hotels and
retailers in the area.
Although Cremo is No. 2 in the Swiss milk
market, with 400 million litres of milk
processed per year, the local perspective
is an important one for them, too.
“Regionality means for us supporting
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the community,” says Frédéric Métrailler,
CEO of Cremo. “All our ingredients for
the yoghurt, the milk and the fruits,
are supplied by local farms, just a few
kilometres away from our site in Lyss”, he
says.
Natural and healthy
The second trend is the consumer’s wish
to eat a more natural, plain yoghurt with
few additives and low on sugar. If we start
with Cremo, they produce both stirred
yoghurts as well as set type for self-mixing
with jam on the bottom and yoghurt on
top. “We want to keep our yoghurts as
natural as possible,” Métrailler says.
The natural “clean label” trend fits very
well with Molkerei Davos’ business
strategy. “Clean label has become more
prominent in consumer awareness,” says
Nitsche. “Consumers appreciate when
the yoghurt contains as few additives as
possible or doesn’t contain substances
that are not naturally present in the
product. Since we are a small yoghurt
manufacturer, we have always done this,”
he says. “We are receiving more and more
requests for yoghurt with less sugar or
even with no sugar at all.”
The consumer trend for natural
yoghurt and less sugar is confirmed by
Puracenter’s Wasescha. “Reduced sugar
has been a trend for some years now. The
trend points towards natural products
and fewer additives,” he says. The dairy
produces the classic Swiss yoghurt, a full-
fat, non-skimmed stirred product. “At the
moment, we produce about 12 varieties
and we have a relatively “clean” product,”
says Wasescha. “We use full-fat, non-
skimmed milk and sugar but no stabilizers
or thickeners. We work with fruit
preparations and stick to the recipes but
use a little less sugar. Our most popular
product is natural yoghurt,” he says.
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Market Touchdown: Switzerland

14 Photo: Cremo
118,272 tonnes
1.5% Swiss milk processed to
yoghurt increase to 118,272
tonnes in 2018 compared to 2017

17.8 kg
A Swiss consumer eats 17.8 kg
yoghurt per year (+0.2%)

3.4%
3.4% Yoghurt processing share
in milk equivalents of total Swiss
milk processing in 2018

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A reliable processing partner

A responsive partner
is key to successful
yoghurt production
The right technology and line configurations are essential in
yoghurt production, as a yoghurt brand has a strong connection to
consistent product quality. In addition, flexibility and cost efficiency
are key factors for success. To find the perfect solution, Swiss dairies
Cremo, Molkerei Davos and Puracenter all teamed up with Tetra Pak.

In many ways, yoghurt is a special product.

Its taste, texture and stability are very
sensitive to certain processing steps. The
customer needs must be fully understood,
both present needs and future, and
translated into the right solution. In order
to identify the right value solution, every
process step needs to be considered and
discussed. With deep knowledge of how
yoghurt behaves, we at Tetra Pak have the
products and technological know-how
and can optimize your production, so that
you can create products with the desired
taste, mouthfeel, texture, stability and
appearance, even if fewer additives are
used. Each line is carefully engineered by
working closely with you to capture your
specific needs.

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“The total line solution is
well suited, thanks to an
optimized design.”

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A reliable processing partner
A sustainable organic dairy
For Cremo, the No. 2 dairy group in
Switzerland, Tetra Pak was the preferred
partner when it was time to realize
the vision of a truly sustainable dairy
in Lyss, a small city near Bern, the
capital of Switzerland. To support the
trend of responsible consumption, the
focus is to keep carbon emissions low.
Organic ESL-milk, quark and yoghurt
are produced with milk from local farms
and fruit ingredients from local growers.
The products are mainly distributed
to consumers in the region, keeping
emissions from transports low.
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Yoghurt production is energy-intensive
because it involves a lot of heating and
cooling. In addition to further reducing
carbon emissions, a solar panel has been
installed on the roof of the dairy and
wood pellets are used instead of oil as
process energy. Tetra Pak contributes
to Cremo’s sustainability goal with
effective processing equipment such
as a pasteurizer that reduces product
losses and saves energy, a separator
with minimum energy consumption
and a plate heat exchanger for efficient
heat treatment. From the efficient key
components, an efficient line solution is
created to match the needs.
 “Tetra Pak was the only
company that supplied us
with the full range.”
“We wanted a single supplier for our
processing equipment and automation,”
says Frédéric Métrailler, CEO of Cremo.
Tetra Pak was chosen, as the company
had built similar small-scale dairies in
Switzerland before. “We appreciate Tetra
Pak’s expertise in the yoghurt sector,”
Métrailler says. The equipment consists of
a pasteurizer, a hot milk separator, a plate
heat exchanger, tanks and the Tetra Pak
Plant Master automation system. The total
line solution is well suited, thanks to an
optimized design that gives higher and
consistent product quality. This is essential
for reducing both carbon emissions and
additives. Furthermore, the process design
reduces costs and maintenance, and the
equipment footprint in the dairy is highly
relevant for smaller-scale dairies.
The full range
When Molkerei Davos planned to build
a new dairy, Tetra Pak was awarded the
contract as general contractor. Apart
from supplying the dairy with raw milk
reception and distribution, storage and
pasteurization, process tanks for yoghurt
and Cleaning-In-Place equipment, the
project included the integration of a wide
range of existing equipment. “Tetra Pak
was the only company that supplied us
with the full range and the company’s
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A reliable processing partner
Yoghurt lines need to offer great flexibility
to support the production of multiple
varieties and support new trends.
concept of milk treatment convinced
us,” says Dietmar Nitsche, Production
Manager at the Davos dairy. “The efficient
homogenization and the high-precision
inline standardization are very good and
Tetra Pak’s engineers gave us important
input on how to optimize product quality.
Also, Tetra Pak took care of the entire
integration of both existing and new
equipment in all plant areas and made
sure that everything worked,” Nitsche
says. Effective automation and accurate
temperature and pressure control
throughout the process ensure product
consistency.
Thanks to the dairy’s new milk treatment
equipment, the yoghurt is more consistent
in quality. It was essential to maintain
the texture and mouthfeel. The local
tradition to heat treat milk at 95°C for 80
seconds was also kept. The continuous
pasteurization at a lower velocity is
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designed to meet customer needs. “The
homogenizing effect was optimized by
adjusting the homogenizing pressure
and lowered the flow rate and, thanks
to that, the consistency in the yoghurt
is higher,” says Nitsche. “In my opinion,
this is an important step in the process
where the equipment must be properly
adjusted before the milk is fed into the
yoghurt tank. The holding time during
heat treatment and the homogenization
pressure have a decisive influence on the
yoghurt quality.” Another advantage is
that the efficient homogenization reduces
effluent load and the dairy’s carbon
footprint.
Flexible production
The small Swiss dairy Puracenter’s
production site is located in the mountain
resort Lenzerheide and processes around
1.4 million kilograms of raw milk per year
into milk, yoghurts, cream cheese, semi-
 Tetra Pak® Homogenizer

6
Tetra Pak® Pasteurizer

Tetra Pak® Standardization unit key components for

a successful yoghurt
production

Tetra Pak® Plate Heat Exchanger

Tetra Pak® Separator

Tetra Pak® High Shear Mixer

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A reliable processing partner

“When you set up a new production plant,

Tetra Pak’s longstanding and international
experience covers quite a lot.”

hard cheese and various cheese fondues.
When the plant went into operation, Tetra
Pak had delivered and installed everything
from raw milk reception and storage to
milk treatment and cheese production
equipment, CIP equipment, automation
and a heater for yoghurt production.
“When you set up a new production plant,
Tetra Pak’s longstanding and international
experience covers quite a lot – and we get
it from one source,” says Carlo Wasescha,
Dairy Division Manager at the dairy
Puracenter.
Using Tetra Pak’s processing equipment,
which supports flexible production, is
highly important for Puracenter, as the
volumes vary greatly during the year. “The
seasonal variations in terms of quantities
are a great challenge; the product losses
must be as low as possible. The plant has
to be usable both in the high season and
in the low season, so that we don’t always
have to produce 100 kg per type, but can
also produce only 7 or 8 kg of blood orange
yoghurt once in a while, for example,”
Wasescha says.
A dependable partner
To summarize, Tetra Pak designs line
solutions adapted to customer needs
and has the flexibility to adapt to new
consumer trends and different markets.
We at Tetra Pak help producers to develop
and produce quality yoghurt and to
overcome challenges associated with
yoghurt production, achieving faster
product introduction, cost efficiency,
sustainable and great-tasting yoghurt
products.

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Tetra Pak, Protects What’s Good, Tetra Pak® Homogenizer, Tetra Pak®
Pasteurizer, Tetra Pak® Plate Heat Exchanger, Tetra Pak® High Shear
Mixer, Tetra Pak® Separator and Tetra Pak® Standardization unit are
trademarks belonging to the Tetra Pak Group. www.tetrapak.com