New cottage cheese cultures secure increased yield and superior quality

Dairies all over the world are continuously looking for means to make their production more cost-effective while preserving or even improving the taste of their products. Chr. Hansen’s new Fresco® 3000 culture program for cottage cheese comes with an attractive promise: Make more cheese from the same milk and make it even better than before.

“We are already on the road sharing the good news with our customers and they like what they hear. The new Fresco^® 3000 series is designed to provide a cheese yield increase of 2-5% for cottage cheese manufacturers. For any dairy with a sizeable cottage cheese production this yield gain represents a considerable economic upside,” says Theis Bacher, Marketing Manager, Cheese Cultures.

“The opportunity to reduce production costs together with improved cheese quality and more robustness against phage attacks gives us reason to believe that we can increase the market potential for cultures in the cottage cheese market. The phage robustness that comes with the new blending concepts behind the Fresco^® 3000 series provides greater dependability than ever before. Dependability that provides improved product quality and hopefully, a better night’s sleep,” Theis Bacher explains.

New life to cottage cheese
Apart from these obvious production advantages, the new Fresco^® series come with powerful consumer benefits: a deliciously smooth texture and mild taste provided by the cultures. Further, with its high-protein, low fat and low sugar content cottage cheese hits the healthy dairy trend spot on.

“The cottage cheese category has long been characterized by low growth and low innovation but recent packaging and fruit flavor innovations have brought cottage cheese closer to the yoghurt segment. Due to this kinship with yoghurt—one of Chr. Hansen’s long-standing key dairy applications—we have been able to leverage our competences in yoghurt technology, applying them in the development of Fresco^® 3000, for instance using texturizing water binding strains which retain moisture during the cook-out procedure,” ends Theis Bacher.

Over the past decade, Chr. Hansen’s Fresco^® series has sparked the international conversion from bulk starter production of cottage cheese to direct-to-the-vat technology. In particular, the Fresco^® program has had a breakthrough in North America, the world’s largest market for cottage cheese. More than half of the world’s 600,000 tons of cottage cheese is made with a direct-to-the-vat concept.