Growth Pattern

There has been steady increase in the consumption of cheese in most countries worldwide, the annual growth rate in cheese consumption being over 3% with an acceleration expected due to worldwide trend of adopting Western consumption habits with a high level of cheese in the diet. About 40% of total world milk production is converted into cheese. The major cheese production has centred in Western countries. In 1995,14.9 million tonnes of cheese was produced in the world, of which the United States and European Union accounted for more than 50%. Significantly, New Zealand exported 110,000 tonnes (over 75% of the production) and is the world’s number two exporter. Both Australia and Switzerland ranking third and fourth, respectively, exported almost 45% of their total production. All these three countries along with EU accounted for 80% of the total world exports of almost one million tones in 1993.

The scenario of cheese production in India is quite bright because of the fact that cheese has all the beneficial attributes of an ideal dairy product and the emergence of new global economic reforms based on globalization and liberalization in the marketing arena that has unfastened the entry to the Indian dairy industry to penetrate the large international cheese market. The growth pattern of cheese production in India has been quite encouraging, being 800 tonnes in 1977 and 1000tonnes in 1980. It increased to about 3000 tonnes per annum in 1987. In 1994,‘the production was estimated at 8,000 tonnes, against the installed capacity of 9,000 tonnes. Against this production, the total demand estimated is placed around 18,000 tonnes which is projected to exceed 30,000 tonnes by 2000 AD.

The growth pattern of cheese production is shown in below Tables

World Milk Utilization Pattern (%)

World Production of Major Dairy Products (Million Tonnes)