MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazilian company invests heavily in Uruguayan dairy industry

The goal is a plant to process 1.5 million litres of milk daily

A major Brazilian dairy corporation, Laticinios Bom Gosto will begin to build its affiliate in Uruguay next May to produce powder milk and butter mainly for the Brazilian market.

The investment will demand an initial 30 million US dollars and will be located in San Jose, approximately 100 kilometres west of Montevideo in Uruguay’s dairy belt.

The plant is planned to receive 600.000 litres of fresh milk per day for the production of 63 tons of powder milk and 1.050 kilos of butter and is expected to create 80 full time direct jobs.

“We plan to begin construction next May/June, and should be finished in 18 months time. The construction should create 300 jobs”, said Wilson Zanatta Laticinios Bom Gosto CEO. He added that the company has a three chapter development program.

“We will begin with powder milk and butter but the second stage will include cheese, when we hope to have a daily remittance of a million litres of fresh milk”, revealed Zanatta.

The third and final stage, with a daily remittance of 1.5 million litres “we expect to be packaging long life milk (UTH) plus producing 2.500 kilos of butter per day”, said Zanatta.

Bom Gosto which operates from Rio Grande do Sul has its main plant in Tapejará which processes 3 million litres of milk daily making it the largest of its kind in Brazil.

The company was started fifteen years ago and currently has 19 production plants distributed in Rio Grande do Sul, Parana, Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Pernambuco and Matto Grosso do Sul.

According to Zanatta the company is leader in Brazil in fifteen different dairy products and has 28.000 diary farmers associated and 2.800 personnel.

Bom Gosto is not the only international dairy incorporation that is investing in Uruguay. New Zealanders and Argentines have set up shop in the country for over a decade and now the US Schreiber Foods has begun purchasing local plants of serum, casein and cheese. Their target is to process 100.000 litres of fresh milk per day and in a couple of years 450.000 litres.