Guest Columns

Perspective:
Dairy Technology

How membrane filtration can unlock value in the dairy market

Dilumina Welagedara

Dilumina Welagedara is an application technologist at Tetra Pak Filtration Solutions. He specializes in the application of reverse osmosis, nanofiltration, ultrafiltration and microfiltration technologies, along with process development and application engineering.

The cheese market is at a pivotal moment. Evolving consumer preferences around health, ingredients and sustainability are forcing producers to re-evaluate long-standing production models.

In today’s market, consumers are generally eating less food as average portion sizes decrease, which can be attributed, in part, to the rise of GLP-1s. Despite these shrinking meal sizes, consumers are increasingly prioritizing protein.

Consequently, there is growing demand for protein-rich, minimally processed and functional foods such as fresh cheese, cottage cheese and functional dairy products. Even as food formats evolve, the demand for protein is as strong as ever. This is more than a product trend. Rather, it indicates a structural shift in how value is created from milk, and an opportunity for producers.

For instance, USDA reports that higher-protein ingredients such as whey protein isolate (WPI) generally command premium pricing compared with lower-protein ingredients. As the industry faces a protein craze, producers that are fully harnessing the value of their milk stand to profit.

Cheese producers are no strangers to protein demand. Years ago, the industry experienced a similar shift when whey moved from being viewed primarily as a byproduct to becoming a significant revenue stream.

Today, that evolution continues. Protein has become an increasingly important driver of value, complementing traditional cheese production and creating new opportunities for processors to maximize the return from every pound of milk.

Many processors already have the foundation in place to participate in this heightened market for protein, expanding beyond their existing production of cheese and whey. This opportunity is about maximizing existing milk streams, leveraging current operations differently and reducing the value lost through byproducts. In other words, producers don’t need to carry out a full operational overhaul to capitalize on protein demand. Rather, they can profit from the existing value they may be leaving on the table.

The key to enabling protein recovery is filtration. By separating milk at the molecular level, processors are able to extract milk proteins without additives or chemical modification. The result is a protein concentration made of real ingredients, a criterion increasingly important to health-conscious consumers.

Filtration itself isn’t new, but its role in value creation is expanding rapidly. The technology is particularly useful because of the many types of filtrations that can be used in different combinations and sequences to produce unique outputs for specific business needs. This flexibility also allows producers to adapt their products to the ever-shifting market.

There is a wide range of technologies available to processors today, including microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis. These filtration technologies are able to produce different types of protein ingredients, including milk protein concentrate (MPC), which has a closer protein composition to whole milk and a protein concentration of around 80% — a product increasingly popular in high-protein applications. In addition to protein concentrates, filtration technology also yields protein isolates. WPIs and milk protein isolates (MPIs) have protein concentrations of around 90% and reduced lactose and mineral content, proving a valuable protein source for premium nutritional and functional food applications.

Producers also have a wide array of filtration approaches to choose from. For example, ultrafiltration and diafiltration are two key processes used to achieve high protein concentrations in products, enabling processors to achieve greater protein purity while maintaining desirable nutritional and functional properties.

These unique formats help to serve different markets and price points, ranging from mainstream protein to highly specialized products. MPI, for example, contains both casein and whey proteins in concentrated form, providing functional and nutritional properties that make it attractive for premium nutritional products. So, it’s useful for higher-priced meal shakes and diet products that help consumers feel full longer. MPC has the same types of protein, but at a lower concentration, making it useful for protein shakes or powders on a more cost-effective budget.

Even with this wide range of possible outputs, many producers are leaving potential revenue streams on the table by not taking advantage of the options available to them. In today’s protein-crazed market, processors must ask themselves if they are getting the most value out of their milk solids and whether they’re set up to remain flexible in the shifting market.

The opportunities to harvest the hidden value in milk inputs exist at every step of the production process. In addition to converting milk into high-value protein ingredients such as MPC and MPI, filtration can be used to further process whey streams generated during cheese production into whey protein concentrate and WPI. Nevertheless, these opportunities are often missed, partially because of a lack of awareness about their existence.

This untapped potential isn’t limited to the industry’s largest players. In fact, the opportunity to use filtration to unlock value is particularly relevant for midsize and smaller producers not yet leveraging protein recovery.

On top of uncovering hidden revenue streams, filtration introduces key efficiency and sustainability considerations. Producers can use this technology to increase yield optimization by creating more output from the same input and reducing waste streams. Advanced membrane systems can help reduce water consumption, improve cleaning efficiency, and increase the energy and process efficiency of systems overall. Some systems can even recover and reclaim water for future plant use.

As the industry and its demands ebb and flow, the message to producers is clear: A single-product focus on cheese is no longer the only, or most successful, model. Now, to stay competitive, producers are finding value in shifting to multi-stream value extraction, such as protein and lactose.

To succeed today, producers need to think differently about milk utilization and identify where revenue gains can be made. By investing in flexible, efficient processing, producers can stay agile in the shifting market. The future dairy processor is not just a cheese producer. Rather, they are a milk value optimizer and harvester of protein.

CMN

The views expressed by CMN’s guest columnists are their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of Cheese Market News®.

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