New milk export firm for Switzerland

The largest Swiss milk marketing and producer organizations, together with Schweizer Milch Produzenten (SMP), have founded the joint export company called LactoFama AG as a service to the Swiss milk producers to promote the values of the entire Swiss dairy industry.

The new joint export company is a self-help organization with the aim to mitigate seasonal imbalances in the market, but is not a substitute for market-oriented production at the milk producer level, according to LactoFama. It will only deal in seasonal export of milk fat that exceeds the domestic demand (the so-called C-segment milk), and seeks for this purpose a partnership based on economic  criteria with the processing sector. To this end the executive board of SMP has made the necessary decisions for startup financing taken from the provisions of the milk support funds. The activities of LactoFama are complementary to the existing segmentation of the industry organisation Branchenorganisation Milch (BOM), which has split the pricing on produced milk up in A-, B- and C-milk, depending on the further use.

All contractual agreements will be legally adjusted, so that LactoFama can accommodate the operational activities gradually and even more milk marketing organizations (at the moment there are ten) are welcome to become a shareholder of LactoFama AG. The new export company will have the office located at the SMP in Bern and will be managed by a board of directors consists of seven persons. First chairman of the new board is Hans Peter Kern, who also is president of the SMP.