Global Dairy Market seeing signs of recovery with China

Several major dairy companies believe the export market is seeing signs of recovery as the world’s largest dairy buyer, China is starting to make new orders as it recovered from the pandemic.
Big dairy processors Bega Cheese and Saputo said there are signs China will normalise its purchases as early as 2nd half of 2020.
Bega Cheese CEO Paul van Heerwaarden said, “It appears China is coming back on stream.” Saputo international sector President Kai Bockmann expects China sales to pick up in the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2020.
Both Bega Cheese and Saputo said there had been a massive shift away from the food services and ingredients sections as the restaurant trade shut down, to heavy demand from the retail divisions.
Meanwhile, Danny Rotman, Chief Executive of New Zealand milk powder producer Keytone Dairy, said his company had seen a fourfold increase in sales of its branded milk powders from both overseas and domestic buyers. In Italy, Newlat Food SpA is set to produce milk powder for the China market after it receives authorisation from Chinese authorities, and it expects its baby food division sales to increase by 10% from its earlier projection for 2020.
In a clear sign of renewed activity in the ice cream segment, Ljubljanske Mlekarne, Slovenia’s largest dairy has just dispatched its first shipment of 35,000 one-litre box of its iconic Planica tropical and chocolate flavored ice cream to China. Tomaz Znidaric, Director of the company said it expects to ship a total of 43 tonnes of ice cream to China this year.
In Vietnam, Vinamilk is now getting prepared to ship its ‘Ong Tho’ sweetened condensed milk to China, a few months after receiving its export license. Earlier this year, Vinamilk has struck the US$20 million milk export contract at the Gulfood Dubai Expo. Vinamilk is optimistic of the market potential in China as the country doubled its import of condensed milk from 2016 to 2019.