Jim Durkin accepts the Processor of the Year award on behalf of Kraft Foods Inc.

Alps, cheese and chocolate are commonly associated with Switzerland. So is the country’s reputation for precision engineering. Just ask anyone who has taken a cable car to the top of a mountain or owns a Swiss watch. A Swiss dairy processor is expanding its presence in the United States by taking precise steps in developing dairy foods, and then executing marketing programs to gain placement on the shelves of grocery stores, with foodservice operators and in specialty food stores.

Ask a tourist about what to see or do in upstate New York, and you might hear about the baseball hall of fame in Cooperstown, boating or fishing on the region’s many lakes or visiting the Corning Museum of Glass.

United States cheesemakers came away with 85 medals at the World Cheese Awards, the most ever for U.S. entrants in the competition. Hundreds of cheese companies worldwide participated, sending more than 2,500 cheeses to Birmingham, England, where they were judged by a field of more than 200 expert tasters from around the world.

Introducing a new product in the dairy foods industry is “a tough business,” says Randall Mitchell, chief executive officer of Smoky Mountain Cheese, Seymour, Tenn. “There’s nothing easy about it.”

Nonfat dry milk (NDM) production increased 3.4% to about 1.6 billion pounds in 2010, according to the American Dairy Products Institute, Elmhurst, Ill.