PepsiCo Inc., Purchase, N.Y., and Theo Muller Group, the largest privately held dairy business in Germany, announced their United States joint venture, Muller Quaker Dairy, will enter the growing U.S. dairy market in mid-July with premium yogurt products. These products — Muller Corner, Muller Greek Corner and MullerFrutUp — mark the first entry by either PepsiCo or Muller into U.S. dairy aisles.
The following yogurts will be sold through supermarket and club retailers in 17 markets in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic U.S. starting this summer:
• Muller Corner and Muller Greek Corner offer add-ins that can be stirred or dipped in. The varieties include — Blueberry, Strawberry, Crispy Crunch, Choco Balls, Chocolate Flakes and Crunchy Granola. The Greek-style yogurt varieties include Honeyed Apricot, Strawberry, Blackberry & Raspberry, and Caramelized Almonds.
• Muller FrutUp varieties include Blueberry Bliss, Very Cherry, Luscious Lemon, Peach Passion Fruit, Radiant Raspberry and Splendid Strawberry, and feature fruit on top.
The Quaker Oats Company (Quaker Yogurt) headquartered in Chicago, is a unit of PepsiCo and lends its name and history to the new venture — Muller Quaker Dairy. According to PepsiCo and Theo Muller Group, Muller Quaker Dairy will satisfy the increasing demand for value-added dairy products in the U.S., where variety and innovation within the category falls behind other regions, especially Europe. U.S. consumption of yogurt and other value-added dairy products is generally less than half that of Europe according to Euromonitor 2011 data.
Worldwide, the dairy category is expected to grow more than any other through 2016 according to Euromonitor 2011 data. This growth is said to be driven by the progressively increasing consumer demand for packaged milk, yogurt and other value-added dairy products, and for other products containing dairy protein, probiotics, and calcium.
PepsiCo is said to already hold a strong position in the global dairy products business. The company acquired Wimm-Bill-Dann, Russia's largest dairy company, in 2011 and has been part of a successful joint venture with Almarai, Saudi Arabia's largest dairy company, since 2009.
Headquartered in Luxembourg, the Theo Muller Group is a holding company whose subsidiaries include a multinational dairy business. The Muller brand originates in Bavaria, Germany and has been producing yogurt and other products for more than 100 years.
PepsiCo’s joint venture with Muller involves building a new, state-of-the-art yogurt manufacturing plant in Batavia, N.Y. Once completed in 2013, it will be one of the largest yogurt plants in the U.S., and is expected to create more than 180 new jobs in upstate New York according to PepsiCo.
