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It will come as no surprise to many to see that the Swiss giant Nestlé has remained as the top-performing dairy company in the world last year.
With an annual turnover of €21.4bn, it beat off rival bids for the top slot from French dairy operations Lactalis and Danone.
The Rabobank report lists the top performers ranked on annual turnover, and highlighted that dairy price recovery last year helped boost the collective annual turnover of the companies by 5.1% in euro terms.
Despite some major mergers and acquisitions, there were no new entrants to the list, just a reshuffling of positions.
The top 10 performers and their annual turnovers were:
1. Nestlé, Switzerland – €21.4bn.
2. Lactalis, France – €17.7bn.
3. Danone, France – €15.5bn.
4. Dairy Farmers of America, US – €13bn.
5. Fonterra, New Zealand – €12.1bn.
6. FrieslandCampina, Netherlands – €12bn.
7. Arla Foods, Denmark/Sweden – €10.3bn.
8. Saputo, Canada – €9.6bn.
9. Yili, China – €8.8bn.
10. Mengnui, China – €7.8bn.
Scale
Danone dropped one position last year, to give Lactalis the second slot.
Another name that will be familiar to Irish dairy farmers is the New Zealand behemoth Fonterra, which went up one position to fifth place in 2017.
The scale of some of the operations is also vast. Fonterra's 23bn litre milk pool is just over three times the size of Ireland's.
China
China is Ireland’s second-biggest market for dairy products, but given the trend for more western diets in Asia, Chinese dairy companies have aspirations to grow their company size.
The two Chinese companies at the bottom of the list are indicative of China’s dairy ambitions, with Yili remaining the largest Asian player on the list.
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