Improved Cottage Cheese with Chr. Hansen’s Fresco Cultures

The Fresco series is successful in many countries but, in particular, it has had a virtual breakthrough in North America, the world’s largest market for cottage cheese.

19/06/08 Chr. Hansen’s Fresco series motivates leading North American cottage cheese manufacturers’ shift to DVS production.

Over the past few years Chr. Hansen’s Fresco series of cultures for cottage cheese has sparked the international conversion from bulk starter production of cottage cheese to DVS technology. The Fresco series is successful in many countries but, in particular, it has had a virtual breakthrough in North America, the world’s largest market for cottage cheese. 20% of North American cottage cheese is made with the third generation of Chr. Hansen’s Fresco cultures.

The 1st generation of the Fresco concept was launched in 2001, the 2nd generation in 2003. The 3rd generation — Fresco 1000 — which contains six culture blends designed to be phage alternatives used in rotation was launched in 2004. Most recently, the Fresco 1000 range was expanded with Fresco 1000-35 and Fresco 1000-70 in 2006 and 2007.

The customers tell the real story

According to Roy Riley, Eastern Region and Fermented Milk Products Manager, Chr. Hansen North America, the success of the Fresco program cannot be told simply by sales or market share. “It is the new customers who turned to the Fresco program and have remained loyal customers that tell the real value and story of this program. Chr. Hansen is the preferred supplier for several large cottage cheese manufacturers,” he says.

Multi-level benefits

In North America, several key factors have contributed to the dramatic growth of the Fresco culture program:

* Above all, strong durability and resistance to bacteriophage which greatly improves the reliability and consistency of the cheese
* Increased cheese yield
* Unsurpassed technical expertise and service before, during and after all trials
* A continued push for improvement resulting in regular additions of new culture blends

“The yield increase is of course very important,” says Nanna Borne, Marketing Manager, Cheese Cultures, Chr. Hansen. “Some plants converted to Fresco based completely on increased yield as their bulk starter program actually performed very well.”

DVS for consistency, control and convenience

The new cheese cultures come in the easy-to-use DVS (Direct Vat Set) packaging form invented by Chr. Hansen. DVS is a highly concentrated and standardized frozen or freeze-dried dairy culture used for the direct inoculation of milk. DVS cultures need no activation or other treatment prior to use and offer a number of advantages in terms of flexibility of use, consistent performance, no investment in bulk starter equipment and possibility of using customized culture blends.

“The Fresco blends are delivered in frozen form in large bags making it easy to add one bag per vat,” explains Nanna Borne. “For bulk starter plants, there are only minimal modifications required to their current cheese making process.”

One quarter of the world’s cottage cheese is made with a DVS concept and Chr. Hansen is the largest in the global DVS cottage cheese market.

Cottage cheese accounts for 5%, or approx. 700.000 tons, of the world’s 14.5 billion tons of cheese production. In North America cottage cheese makes up 12% of all cheese.