Milk-based beverages are quickly becoming one of the drinks of choice for today's healthy lifestyle-seeking consumers.
The increased interest about wellness and the issues related to obesity are changing consumers' tastes away from carbonated soft drinks and towards alternative beverages which are considered more "natural".
Dairy products are perceived among these "natural" products, but to win consumer's preference they have to find their way onto supermarket's shelves as convenient-sized and innovative packagings to align themselves with the new lifestyles of active, convenience-driven consumers and avoid old clichés that consider milk a drink "only for kids".
Tackling the US market
The US market for milk-based beverages is a multi-billion market: flavoured milk is definitely one of the key products in terms of growth rate. To be able to meet the opportunities offered by the market for innovative dairy products, Nestlé USA has deployed a project to evaluate potential suppliers for these products.
Given the importance of this project, Nestlé USA was looking for a technological partner rather than for a mere supplier. So, to gather all data required for this difficult choice, a technological as well as a financial and organizational audit was performed on a number of suppliers to investigate about their fulfilment potential.
GEA Procomac was able to establish a very strong cooperation with Nestlé people right from the start; the fact that GEA Procomac is a worldwide partner of Nestlé in a number of different projects has helped considerably. At the end of the audit phase Nestlé was convinced that GEA Procomac was the right partner for the Project and formally gave GEA Procomac the order for five filling lines to be installed in the US.
A new project
GEA Procomac is thrilled to be offered such a great opportunity to cooperate with Nestlé in such a big project. GEA Procomac is also excited about the opportunities that exist in the United States for milk based products and is working on this project to obtain the best results that its state-of-the-art technology can give.
(06/08/2007)