“Summer Sun, something’s begun” sings John Travolta (Danny Zuko) about his summer romance at the beach with Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) during the song “Summer Nights,” one of the many popular hit songs in the 1978 musical “Grease.” 

Cheese continues its run as perhaps the strongest segment of the dairy industry. For the year ending Jan. 28, there were very few kinks in its armor.

With some 2,500 employees and annual net sales of $1.8 billion, Sargento Foods has been a family-owned cheese processor for 70 years. 

Like several other segments of dairy, most natural and processed cheese categories enjoyed strong dollar sales during a recent 52-week period, but suffered unit sales declines, according to information provided by Chicago-based Circana.

Both categories lost ground, but a number of subcategories bucked the downward trend.

The Kraft Heinz Co., headquartered in Pittsburgh and Chicago, said it completed the sale of certain assets in its global cheese business and the license of certain trademarks to an affiliate of Groupe Lactalis for total consideration of approximately $3.3 billion, including cash consideration of approximately $3.2 billion.

When we last covered the retail cheese segment in a Market Trends report — back in April of this year — the picture was very Gouda across the board.

The natural cheese category managed to avoid gridlocks on the retail side in 2021, cruising at a comfortable speed with positive results.