Quality milk keeps prices up for Cono

Dutch cheese cooperative Cono Kasemaakers has brought cow welfare and natural milk production together to command a 30% premium over average prices in the supermarket cheese departments.

Cono Kasemaakers now labels its Koopsen and Beemster products as ‘honest cheeses’. An advertising campaign for the cheeses claims that the taste is simply better because cows are out on grass all summer.

Cono’s annual cheese production is 30,000 tonnes. The company’s Gouda cheese now retails for up to 7.26 euro per kg. Average price for quality Gouda is between 5.45 and 6.35 euros.

Earlier in the year, Cono told its suppliers that if cows are kept outside in summer for a minimum of five hours per day for 100 days, they will get 0.5 euros per litre more for their milk.

Cono has launched the initiative because an increasing proportion of Dutch dairy farmers are keeping cows indoors on processed feed all year. Cono believes that consumers do not want milk production to be increasingly industrialised.

The move has attracted a lot of attention in Holland, where Cono already pays farmers more for its milk than other processors.

Around half of all Cono’s cheese production is sold on the home market, with another 40% going to Belgium. The remaining 10% is sold in the German market. 50 supermarkets in the USA also sell Cono’s Koopsen and Beemster cheeses.

This year, Cono believes that its approach will cost it 1.36 million euro. However, sales performance indicates that the new cow welfare and milk quality approach means the co-op is having no problem selling all the cheese it can produce.