Laban - A New Arab Dairy Product On The Spanish Market

In cooperation with Chr. Hansen the leading dairy cooperative society of Galicia, Feiraco, has just launched a range of fermented milk products for Arabs on the Spanish market. The product is called Laban, it is essential in the Arab diet and until now it has not existed in Spain.

The process of immigration can be full of obstacles, however it also holds a waste number of business opportunies.

Feiraco, one of the leading dairy cooperatives in Spain, has been the first company to see that the approx. 700.000 Arabs living in Spain are not able to find in the supermarkets one of the basic products in their nutritive habits: the Laban.

This has now been changed through a working partnership between the Dairy Products Division of the University of Santiago, the cooperative Feiraco and Chr. Hansen.

"After 2 long years of investigation and developing, we have at last succeeded in introducing this fermented milk product to the Muslim community in Spain," said Jose Luis Antuña, Feiraco's General Manager.

High nutritional value

The Laban is an acid type of cow milk with a texture very similar to the kefir, though slightly more liquid. This type of milk has a high nutritional value, and it has a beneficial effect on the gastrointestinal passage. This food product, original from Lebanon, is essential in the diet in the Arab countries.

"From the beginning we made a study of viability from all perspectives, and realized an important number of trials in collaboration with Dairy Products Division of the University of Santiago and the leader within dairy cultures, the global ingredients producer Chr. Hansen," explained Mr. Antuña.

"We have obtained the wished quality standards with the cultures from Chr. Hansen, among them the CHN-22, and the Arab community in Spain has finally received a product with cultural roots."