Germans continue to drive cheese boom
GERMANY – With red meat and sausage demand now back to almost pre-BSE days in Germany, dairy experts had expected to see the soaring cheese consumption curve flatten out. Instead, the latest predictions by marketing and pricing organisation ZMP estimates this year’s domestic consumption of cheese to be 1.8 million tonnes, up 3.4% on 2000. This compares with the 2.4% increase in home consumption between 1999 and 2000, when the BSE scare really got underway.
ZMP did warn that much of this year’s rise was in the first half of the year and that home consumption of cheese was actually reducing month by month. Making up for this, however, are rapidly increasing sales of German cheeses abroad.
The country’s milk industry federation, MIV, reported that cheese exports for the first eight months of this year were up 10.5% compared with the same period last year. Exports at the end of August totalled 374,000 tonnes, with 83% of this going to EU countries. Italy, France and the Netherlands imported nearly half of this.
German cheese exports outside the EU rose by 9% in the first eight months of this year. MIV reported that Russia was once again becoming an important customer with just over 24,000 tonnes imported there.
One of the reasons for the rising consumption of dairy products in Germany are prices – they are still among the lowest in Europe despite increases on retail prices of up to 20% in the first half of 2001. Officials at MIV said that the products at the bottom of the EU retail price league are pasteurised milk at 0.88 euro per litre, UHT milk at 0.61 euro per litre and butter at one euro for 250g. In addition, while dairy prices have remained relatively stable for years in Germany, household incomes have soared. MIV reported that in 1960, when the average household income was just over 400 euro per month, 250g of butter sold for 0.85 euro. Forty-one years later, this price has increased by 0.16 euro, or 18%, while average monthly income per household has increased tenfold.
