Cheese Awareness Needs to be Improved

In people’s previous impressions, cheese was an imported product, and the public’s way of eating cheese was still relatively vague. It wasn’t until children’s cheese appeared as a snack that we had a new understanding of cheese.

From daily life, cheese sticks are the most common type of cheese products. Common brands include Miaokelando, Dr. Cheese and Yili’s children’s cheese sticks. These brands often give themselves labels such as nutrition and high calcium.

Indeed, the nutritional content of cheese in the traditional sense is one of its major advantages.

The production process of cheese determines its nutritional value.

If you want to make 100 kg of cheese, you need to undergo a series of complex processes such as fermentation and curdling of 1 ton of milk. After filtration, processing and compression, the cheese is rich in acid bacteria content, protein, calcium, phosphorus and other nutrients, and the taste is more dense. Moist, with a creamy and fragrant fermented flavor.

The advantages of taste and nutritional value make cheese popular among consumers.

Cheese sales in my country are mainly divided into catering and retail sales, of which catering accounts for a large proportion. According to Euromonitor data, sales of catering cheese will reach 155,600 tons in 2021, accounting for 66% of total sales, and retail cheese will account for 34%.

Catering cheese refers to the cheese used to accompany the meal, and the common ones are cheese slices, cheese shreds, etc. Retail cheese mainly refers to snack cheese represented by cheese sticks, such as shredded cheese sticks and cheese blocks.

Products such as cheese sticks and cheese slices are all processed cheese products.

Reprocessed cheese undergoes secondary processing, that is, further modulation on the basis of the original cheese, the fat content will be further increased, and its nutritional content will be greatly reduced compared with the original cheese.

Therefore, compared with the nutritional content, the taste of cheese snack products will be more popular among children. Nowadays, cheese products are generally also a way of thinking about snacks.

In contrast to foreign markets, cheese development ideas are completely different.

In the early 20th century, Americans mixed natural cheese with milk, emulsifiers, stabilizers and other additives to produce processed cheese. Two or more natural cheeses are processed into processed cheese through steps such as crushing, adding emulsifier, heating and stirring, and full emulsification.

Processed cheese’s complex process includes heat treatment, which results in lower levels of bacteria and longer shelf life. At the same time, processed cheese can be added with different auxiliary materials to form different flavors, and the product category is more abundant. This production method is suitable for industrial production and can achieve large-scale output.

At present, the consumption of processed cheese accounts for 60%-70% of the global cheese consumption, and it is developing in the direction of nutrition and diversification.

The industrialization and popularization of processed cheese has made cheese sticks a popular product, driving a substantial increase in cheese retail sales.

According to Euromonitor data, the compound growth rate of retail cheese from 2007 to 2021 will reach 20.6%. Among the 81,600 tons of retail cheese sales in 2021, processed cheese products accounted for 74,700 tons, accounting for 91% of total retail cheese sales. It is expected to reach 92% in 2022.

On the whole, the rapid growth of the cheese stick market benefits from many aspects.

First of all, it comes from the demand side. The increase in the number of children has brought strong purchase demand in the cheese industry. According to research report data, the number of domestic children has grown to nearly 70 million, and in 2020, children’s cheese consumption will account for 64%. Among the people who participated in the survey, 52% of consumers only buy cheese for children. The snack value of cheese is affirmed again.

On the corresponding production side, cheese is a heavy asset investment. The cost of the imported cheese production line is 20 million yuan (capacity 37,500-75,000 sticks/h), and the cost of domestically produced cheese is 3 million-5 million yuan (capacity 7,500-9,000 sticks/h). The gap is large.

After the development of the industry tends to be stable, the domestic cheese production line tends to be stable, and the involution of the brand end is also intensifying.

Browsing the major e-commerce platforms, it is found that brands of cheese sticks such as Miaokelando, Cheese Doctor, Yili, Miaofei, and Xiaoyushen are relatively common. While there is not much difference in product categories, it is not easy to form its own brand tonality. At the same time, the nutritional content and additive content of cheese sticks have become the key to differentiation.

In June this year, the new national standard stipulated that the proportion of cheese in processed cheese products should be greater than 50%, and products with a cheese proportion in the range of 15-50% can only be called “cheese products”, which will be implemented on December 30, 2022.

Even though many brands are trying to differentiate themselves with clean recipes, the current common cheese stick products do not have obvious differences in the types and contents of nutrients and additives, and even the cheese content of most products is not clearly marked.

At this stage, the domestic cheese market is still in the homogenization stage, and cheese stick products are more developed in the direction of children’s food.

The problem is that the cheese category itself has a considerable ceiling. The category education of children’s food seems to make cheese enter people’s lives. In essence, the ceiling that limits the development of the cheese category is not a good thing for the industry itself.

In the adult cheese market, cheese has greater value and uses. Once it can enter the adult market in a suitable form, cheese will attract new opportunities for growth.

About Cheersonic

Cheersonic manufactures the leading portioning equipment for bakeries producing fresh and frozen desserts. Since 1998 bakers have used Cheersonic machines to cut, slice and portion cheesecake, pie, layer cake, loaves, butter, cheese, pizza, sandwichs, and more. Cheersonic offers ultrasonic cutting solutions that support start-up bakeries and high production commercial facilities alike. Small standalone machines can be used in manual baking facilities and large inline robotic solutions aid in high speed production.

Cheersonic offers many ultrasonic slicing models, both inline and offline applications, with production speeds of 80 to 1,500 cakes or pies per hour.

Cheersonic’ latest offline introductions include ultrasonic cutting with or without divider inserts between each slice. This improves the quality of the cut and makes for a much better product presentation for the customer. In addition, robotic arm improves the speed, efficiency, and accuracy of the cutting process, producing professional looking products every time.

Chinese Website: Cheersonic Provides Professional Ultrasonic Cutting Solutions