Long life milk, breakfast cereal and snack bar producer Freedom Foods has signed up to new supply partnerships in China and Vietnam.
Freedom has partnered with Vietnamese milk processor, International Dairy Products (IDP), to launch the Love’in Farm UHT milk range, and Chinese importer, Pinlive Foods, to supply dairy and cereal products.
Freedom and Pinlive have already been collaborating on an initial supply project for a year.
The Australian company’s northern Victorian joint venture milk processor, Pactum Dairy Group, has been packing an Australian line of ultra high temperature (UHT) treated of Weidendorf milk for Pinlive.
Pinlive imports a host of food lines packed specifically for the Chinese retail markets from various overseas locations, including its Weidendorf beer, canned foods, biscuits, cakes, vegetable oil and chocolate.
The first of Freedom’s new Pinlive dairy and cereal lines will be launched in China after July for sale in traditional retail outlets and via online e-commerce channels such as the popular Tmall website.
Freedom Foods managing director, Rory Macleod, said Pinlive saw Australia as an important potential source for quality cereal and dairy products, and likely to become a more competitive source as a result of last year’s China-Australia Free Trade Agreement.
Although UHT milk is already allowed to be imported through free trade zones, all Chinese tariffs on Australian dairy and cereal products are set to be eliminated in the next three to seven years.
The IDP partnership in Vietnam also involves product from the Pactum plant at Shepparton.
It is Freedom’s first contract to Vietnam and is expected involve about 4 million litres of UHT product sales during the next 12 months.
The product range will retail at a small premium to Vietnamese UHT products.
Mr Macleod said IDP wanted to make its high quality Australian milk lines more accessible to a wider Vietnamese audience and expand the range with other value-added products.
IDP wanted to build a strong portfolio of Australian dairy products for Vietnam and other export markets.”
Freedom has food manufacturing plants in Taren Point in Sydney, Melbourne and Stanbridge, near Leeton in the NSW Riverina.
