Silviu Popovich, head of foods division for Russia’s Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods told us that Russia is the biggest importer of cheese. He said there were two main players in Russia at the moment (WBD and Unimilk) and said that, up to 2015, there was perhaps room for a third big player. Will one emerge, he asked.
Unimilk’s Pavel Isaev said Russia was becoming more interesting for the dairy market. Of all the dairy categories, only enriched kefir and functional mini-drinks showed a sales decrease.
Mika Koskinen of Valio said the aim was to be a good member of Russian dairy society, and you couldn’t do that purely by importing. You had to do production in the country.
PepsiCo, which has taken over Wimm-Bill-Dann – currently a $10bn business – aims to be a $30bn business by 2020 according to Kim Small, VP and general manager Global Dairy. A big ambition! It will be interesting to see how much dairy figures in that.
Rabobank’s Mark Voorbergen said one of the risks of companies such as PepsiCo getting into dairy was ‘category confusion’. These experts in sugar, fatty, salty snacks may erode dairy’s healthy ‘halo’.
There will be a full report on the Congress in a future issue of Dairy Innovation.
Geoff Platt is editor of Dairy Innovation magazine. He’s also active on LinkedIn.
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