Arla Foods Ingredients is launching a new ingredients toolbox to support dairy producers in South America’s growing cream cheese market. It will demonstrate how the company’s Nutrilac® line of functional milk proteins can help them create new products and enter sectors such as food service.
The number of new launches of spreadable cheeses in South America increased by 10% between 2021 and 2022.1 However, traditional cream cheese-making is a complex, inefficient and expensive process, which can take as long as 20 hours. The finished product contains only a third of the milk input, with two thirds left over as acid whey, which is costly to dispose of and presents a potential environmental risk.
By using Nutrilac® products, producers can create cream cheeses with excellent flavor and texture while reducing the length of the manufacturing process – in some cases to just 30 minutes. The ingredients are easy to use with existing equipment, minimizing wastage and maximizing cost savings.
In situations where milk availability is limited, increasing production capacity is a particular challenge. Dairies can overcome it by using Nutrilac® to create cream cheese with 100% yield, thereby avoiding acid whey streams, and allowing the use of existing yogurt or petit suisse lines, with milk potentially being redirected to higher profit lines. Products in the range can also enable the use of acid whey as an ingredient in cream cheese, creating value from a product that would otherwise be disposed of at high cost.
Nutrilac® ingredients are easy to handle and highly versatile, making them a perfect solution for new products. One sector where they offer opportunities is food service, where cream cheese often features in products such as cheesecakes and sushi.
Ignacio Estevez, Application Manager, South America, at Arla Foods Ingredients, said: “Dairy producers looking to enter South America’s cream cheese market face a range of challenges, and this toolbox offers some of the solutions. One of the biggest questions is how to increase capacity without incurring additional costs in equipment, raw materials, energy and logistics. Nutrilac® ingredients can help create cheese products with excellent flavor and texture while achieving greater production capacity and minimizing waste.”
The new toolbox will be presented by Arla Foods Ingredients experts in a series of webinars in Spanish and Portuguese. They will start in April and the link to subscribe in advance is: https://video.la.arlafoodsingredients.com
1Innova Market Insights
