The popularity of porridge has helped to turn milk sales in Britain round after a 30 year decline, according to the Milk Development Council.
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The MDC, a farmer-funded body tasked with market development and promoting dairy farm profitability, said today (Friday) the past 24 months has seen a bottoming-out then increase in sales, recovering an estimated 230 million litres from the commodity market into the valuable liquid retail market.
Liz Broadbent, director of market development at MDC, said that this growth, worth around £4m (USD$7.35m) to Britain’s dairy farmers, is the first credible and seemingly sustainable rise in the past three decades.
“It’s down to an increase in the frequency of buying milk rather than people buying more during each shopping trip. And the indications are it’s being used mainly in porridge, tea and coffee,” she says.
Market research company TNS, who carried out the research, certainly found that porridge consumption rose this winter with sales up 25%, while hot drinks – mainly tea and coffee – increased by around 17% and 8% respectively.

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By GlobalDataBut rather than putting the rise down to a colder-than-average winter, TNS said there is a significant rise in sales of branded milks, firmly pointing towards successful promotion and marketing as opposed to a seasonal ‘blip’.
“This justifies the industry’s recent moves to ease up on generic promotions just telling people to drink milk and instead target specific products at specific groups,” said Liz Broadbent. “Consumers clearly respond to these strategies which gives a clear direction moving forwards and should reassure investors that there is a future for milk and dairy companies.”
A shift away from the days of dancing milk bottle advertisements is typified in MDC’s latest campaign specifically targeting teenage girls – who are at increased risk from osteoporosis in later life if they don’t consume enough calcium now – and in the support provided to processors in developing strong branded lines.
But even more activities like this will be needed to keep sales rising as the research has also discovered a growing ‘black hole’ of low milk consumers, or ‘dairy dodgers’, in the population. These tend to be the more affluent groups including single professionals and young parents who missed out on free milk themselves at school.
“They don’t have a milk-drinking habit and are passing that on to the next generation. They account for around half of the population but consume only a quarter of the volume,” she said. “Generic advertising simply doesn’t work with this group – they have no prior experience or nostalgia about milk so we need to give them the reasons why it has a place in their lives.”
She said the discovery of this group further fuels the argument that the approach of the dairy industry must change if it is to avoid losing newly-gained ground.
“We’ve already done segmentation work which shows that convenience, innovation and habit are the key,” she said. “Cost is not an issue but providing milk in a form they like, when they want it and where they want it are all crucial. The other route is through our school milk programmes which are redeveloping the milk drinking habit at an early age.”