PLMA 2025: PlanetDairy targets lower carbon emissions with hybrid dairy innovation
13 Jun 2025 | PlanetDairy
Stine Nykjær Lennert, commercial director at PlanetDairy, discussed the Danish company’s hybrid shredded cheese and milk at PLMA and the technical challenge of neutralizing off notes. She sees the products as a “bridge” between traditional dairy and plant-based options, which appeal to sustainability-minded consumers who still enjoy the taste of animal-based milk.
This is food ingredients first with Steene Leonard from Planet Jerry's.
Steena, can you tell us what you're presenting at PLMA today?
Yeah, I am presenting our hybrid products and dairy.
We have two shredded cheeses in Brandon, and then we also are able to do all kinds of cheeses in hybrids, and then we are launching after the summer.
Hybrid milk which we are presenting here and what gap does your hybrid dairy fill between traditional and plant-based products?
It fills the gap that many people, they want to do something regarding sustainability, but they don't want to compromise on the nice dairy taste and functionality.
So therefore we are building a bridge between the vegan and the.
Full dairy to kind of get the mass consumers who want to be sustainable but still love the dairy taste as we do as.
What would you say is the biggest technical challenge in blending dairy with plant-based ingredients?
It's to get the dairy taste and not the taste of the plant protein.
That can be a challenge.
And that's why it takes a long time to develop.
And how does your hybrid cheese deliver the same taste and melt as regular cheese?
Because I think what we have done is when we have made our sustainable cheese, we have done it with a purpose.
It has to blend in together with the real cheese.
So it has not been the purpose of doing a vegan or.
Something else, so we have really worked on nutrition, so our protein level is quite high and and and also made sure that the uptake of the plant protein is not there.
So I think that's what makes it different.
Now consumers can be skeptical of unfamiliar formats.
How are you building trust and understanding around hybrid dairy?
To be honest and to be very transparent, I think that's very important.
And then when they taste it, we are attending PLMA also to get more consumers around the world to taste it, and then they are like, oh, it's really nice.
So it's, it's a lot of, marketing and it's a lot of trials and testing and , what we're doing, you know, to build the trust with consumers.
Mhm.
And how do your hybrid products reduce carbon footprint compared to conventional dairy?
Our cheese, our mission is we want to keep the dairy taste, so we want to go as far as possible, and on cheese we actually managed to save more than 40% because it's only 40% real dairy cheese and 60% sustainable cheese.
On milk, not as much because to keep the nice milk dairy taste, we can't go as high.
Plant as we can on cheese, so then you save around 20-30% in CO2, but milk you also consume quite a lot, so it still has a great impact.
Do you see dairy, do you see hybrid dairy as a long term category or a stepping stone toward fully plant-based or precision fermented products?
Yeah, we do because right now in Europe, precision fermentation is not.
Knowledge and I think it will take many years before we are there.
So until then we can't really make some plant products that taste completely like dairy, and the mass markets still like the dairy taste.
So therefore I think it has a really good role to play in building grids because I think more or less main consumers, they want to do sustainability, but they still would like the same taste as they know.
Great, thanks so much for your time, Tina.
