Birthday Cefetra Dairy is looking forward to another year as the first

The Cefetra Dairy office is not close to the parent company BayWa in Rotterdam, but in 'De Jamfabriek' in Den Bosch, together with a whole range of other food companies. "It's fun and also inspiring," says Ten Kate.

Cefetra Dairy is a subsidiary of a major global ingredient supplier. Does that help you find access to business partners and take steps in the market?
"Certainly, Cefetra and BayWa are major players in the agricultural markets. They are known as solid and professional companies. That gives confidence to our business contacts. For us, the support of a strong parent company, which helps us where necessary, also means that we are taken care of in a number of important areas, including in the financial, legal and administrative areas. Dairy is new to Cefetra, but that is what we are for. We have a team with very experienced employees."

"Operationally, we now have a lot of freedom. Our group uses a decentralized business model, which means that we have a lot of input into our company. We are happy with that and see it as a great opportunity. In the meantime, we benefit from collaboration with other companies in the group and we can fall back on the support of Rotterdam. That is certainly important in a year like this, with high dairy prices."

Did you also stick to the projected product profile?
"Because I come from the cheese business, I expected to mainly trade a lot of cheese, as well as powder and butter. That turned out a bit differently. It also turned out to be a lot of butter and powder." 

Does Cefetra Dairy want to be a broad dairy trader that covers all commodities?
"We want to be active across the entire spectrum, with the exception of the liquid part and infant nutrition. Infant nutrition has very special requirements and has to deal with all kinds of extra supervision. In my opinion, this is mainly something for the producers themselves. The liquid trade also has have their own peculiarities. In terms of market, we largely focus on Europe, but we also export to North Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. I do not rule out that we will further sharpen our profile in the long run."

The Netherlands already has many dairy trading companies. What distinguishes juliie from others active in the market?
"I believe in the power of new entrants. That creates a healthy dynamic and keeps everyone sharp. Moreover, we have a team that is on top of the business. However, you have to have good capital in terms of capital. We have the support of Cefetra Group and parent company BayWa. Based on the strategy, Cefetra wants to invest more in food and does this through various 'teams' such as Cefetra Dairy. All this, plus the collaboration from Cefetra, reassures our commercial partners. We also want to distinguish ourselves with brands towards our customers. That's who we are. building and the brands must help us to give customers certainty about the characteristics of our products."

What are you going to do with sustainability?
"BayWa has set itself the goal of being climate neutral by 2030. This does pose a number of challenges, especially in the field of transport. Here at the office we try to work paperless and use energy as efficiently as possible, but the biggest challenges in dairy are involved in production and transport."

Cefetra Dairy exudes a lot of ambition, but are you also well accepted as a newcomer? I can imagine that in a year like 2022, where dairy was almost pulled out of the factory, processors did not necessarily need to have another trade contact.
"In a few cases we received the response from processors that they felt fine with their existing commercial contacts, but usually we got in quickly. The names Cefetra and BayWa often opened doors. Moreover, the companies that were initially reluctant to respond responded different now, also because the market is currently different. That is of course a new opportunity for us. Markets are constantly changing, but we continue to see opportunities. The almost past year has also made it clear more than ever how important a a good supply of raw materials is necessary to feed people everywhere in the world."