Fonterra sees golden opportunity for white butter

Fonterra has developed a new white butter product to meet growing demand from manufacturers in the Middle East market.

The team from Fonterra’s Research and Development Centre has collaborated with its global ingredients business NZMP to meet the needs of manufacturers who prefer white butter as a processing ingredient for their food products.

Although Fonterra’s butter is known amongst Middle East consumers for its golden appearance thanks to grass-fed cows, a niche segment of manufacturers has traditionally sourced butter from grain-fed cows which produce dairy products with a pale colour.

Fonterra Dairy Foods Category Director of NZMP Casey Thomas said Fonterra responded to customer needs through an innovative manufacturing process that enabled the reduction of the golden appearance of the butter without impacting quality.

“While our yellow butter already sees great success in this market, we saw an opportunity to tap into this new area for customers to use in a variety of applications such as spreadable jar cheese, recombined cream cheese, and could soon be used in ice-cream,” he said.

The product is now available in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bahrain, Turkey and Pakistan. Future plans include launching the product in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and South America.