Ornua expects its flagship product – Kerrygold – to become a billion euro product in the coming years.
According to the companies Director of Dairy Trading and Ingredients, Bernard Condon, this prediction follows record sales of the butter brand in 2015.
“Last year Kerrygold retail sales reached a record of €740m,” he said.
Condon said that Kerrygold continues to be the number one butter brand in Germany, with 3m packs sold on a weekly basis.
Nearly every fridge in Germany will have Kerrygold in it at some stage during the month.
Speaking at a recent conference on dairy risk management, the Ornua Director said that Kerrygold also reached record sales volumes in the US last year, making it the number three branded butter.
In 2014, Kerrygold was the fifth most popular branded butter in the US, but due to a 60% jump in revenues, it has moved up two places.
However, Condon said that the product still needs to be supported in the major markets to maintain its share of the market.
“We do have to support it more in times of lower prices, as competitors lower their prices,” he said.
He also said that allocating as much milk as possible to the Kerrygold brand will protect Irish co-ops and dairy farmers from the volatile global dairy markets to a certain extent.
“About 33% of our total volume goes into the Kerrygold brand, so about 66% goes into ingredients and commodity markets,” he said.
He continued to say that diversification into other products was key to the future success of the Kerrygold brand.
We have a big launch going on at the moment with the launch of Kerrygold cream liqueur in a few states in the US and it will be launched in Germany later this year.