A-ware to build cheese plant in Netherlands

The Dutch A-ware Food Group is currently building in partnership with New Zealand-based Fonterra an 80,000 tonne cheese plant at Heerenveen in the Netherlands. The group aims to eventually process around a million tonnes of milk per year at the site. Cheese production at Heerenveen should start end of 2014 with whey and lactose processing in a parallel facility on the same site, also planned to start in 2014/early 2015.

The A-ware move into cheese and dairy ingredients production with Fonterra was only finally agreed in March 2013. Behind the arrangement is the New Zealand group’s continual quest for high quality whey products for the world market. In Europe, Fonterra already has joint ventures with First Milk (UK) and Rokiskio (Lithuania).

A-Ware, formed by a merger in 2010 between private dairies run by the Bouter and Anker families, is so far primarily a cheese warehousing, packaging and logistics concern, working for a selection of other dairies. At the same time it processes around 100 million kg milk, producing a wide range of cheese including traditional Gouda, Maasdam and Edam under the Anker Cheese label as well as speciality smoked and processed cheeses (Schipper Cheese).

A-ware currently has 18 different sites and 42 packing lines with maturing capacity for some 5,000 tonnes of cheese at any one time. Starting late 2014, the A-ware/Fonterra consortium aims to meet its milk demands by buying from other producer groups including the independent Dutch Milk Foundation pool. This is an alternative market for dairy farmers founded in 2008 under European Commission monopoly avoidance regulations when the two leading Dutch dairies Friesland Foods and Campina merged. Other possible suppliers earmarked include the Dutch farmer group NoorderlandMelk.

But urgently required for the Heerenveen expansion is also more contracted producers. It is understood that A-Ware aims to attract new suppliers in north Netherlands with a premium of €0.01 per litre over the price paid to farmers by the leading cheesemaker DOC Kaas in Hoogeveen. DOC Kaas is a cooperative buying around 1 billion kg of milk annually and producing an estimated 115,000 tonnes of cheese.