Analysis milk
Whey promoted from feed to fitness market
Liquid whey concentrate, also known as thick whey, has gained a lot of popularity in recent months. From a residual product, it has been promoted to a carefully produced raw material for high-quality and health-promoting food ingredients.
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For part of the market this has been the case for some time, but in recent months the entire whey market seems to be in the grip of the higher segment. For those who do not want to believe it, a quick look at the price development should suffice. In April last year, the DCA quotation for liquid whey concentrate was still at €75 per ton of dry matter. Not a top level, but certainly not a low point for the past few years either. It has also been regularly given away as a gift, as an energy drink for pigs or calves. However, since week 51 of last year the price has been at around €1.000 per ton of dry matter or more.
That is well above the price of feed whey powder, a product that has traditionally been the fixed destination of a large part of all thick whey. Whether the current price level will remain, or will increase even further, is difficult to say. For now, the market seems quite stable, but the question is: for how much longer?
Much depends on the demand for performance-enhancing whey products in particular, known for their capsules and large plastic containers of whey powder, which are popular, especially among young people who want to work on building muscle.
Other factors that influence the market are the volume of cheese production and the processing capacity for whey concentrate. This processing capacity seemed to be a major problem for a long time. Many processors gave priority to drying skimmed milk concentrate into skimmed milk powder in their powder towers. However, this did not yield so well in the past year.
The high prices for premium ingredients such as WPC80 or WPI90, with prices of up to €17.000 per ton or more, did the rest. So more and more liquid whey concentrate is being processed into a high-quality ingredient, where in the past this was only done with a part of the whey, especially for baby food. Nevertheless, prices for liquid whey still remain high.
This could become a problem for the animal feed sector. Traditionally, as mentioned, the largest part goes there. As a result, the prices for young animal feed remained affordable and the quotations for feed whey powder in particular, but also feed milk powder, did not do anything crazy. The big question is what will happen to these prices if almost all whey concentrate passes the animal feed industry by? Should this sector look for even cheaper raw materials, or should it also learn to live with much more expensive feed?