LOL expands marketings in Mitsui, Dean ventures - Newsline

Rural Cooperatives, Sept-Oct, 2002 by Patrick Duffey

In a pair of joint ventures this summer, Minnesota-based Land O' Lakes (LOL) significantly expanded its potential dairy product marketings on both the national and international scenes. The most recent move was to expand an alliance and licensing arrangement with Dean Foods, Dallas, Texas. Dean, through its Morningstar Foods subsidiary, will use the LOL brand name nationally on a broad range of value-added milk and cultured dairy products.

The first product launched under the new venture is LOL's Dairy Ease, a lactose-free milk.

The venture supercedes an earlier dairy marketing alliance between the two firms. Jack Gherty, LOL president, said the cooperative would benefit from Dean's national brand-based product development and expertise. The arrangement grants perpetual, royalty-bearing national licensing rights of the LOL brand directly to Dean Foods and includes additional value-added products, such as milks, aseptic products, infant formulas and soy products.

On the western front, LOL and Mitsui & Co. Ltd., one of Japan's top trading companies, have opened Cheese & Protein International, a $150 million cheese and dairy plant joint venture at Tulare, Calif. The business can process 3 million pounds of milk a day. Tulare County's milk was valued at $1.1 billion last year, the first Golden State county with a billion-dollar commodity.

The 450,000-square-foot plant, with its staff of 120 employees, had been operating for a couple months before the July grand opening. The plant will initially produce 120 million pounds of mozzarella cheese and 75 million pounds of whey solids used as thickening and foaming additives in food products, including infant formula, nutritional drinks and ice cream. In the second phase, to be completed in 2004, production will double to 240 million pounds of cheese and 150 million pounds of whey. LOL's mozzarella operation at Gustine, Calif., acquired in 2000 from the Beatrice Group, has seen staff scaled back from 143 to about 100. The operation may be shut down later this fall, and the building sold or leased because of the new Tulare operation.