Finnish dairy firm Valio has secured a deal with a single distributor in Australia, providing easier access to its low-lactose and lactose-free milk powders.
The company confirmed it had signed an agreement with New South Wales-based MPD Dairy Products who will distribute Valio Eila lactose-free milk powder and Valio Hyla low-lactose-free milk powder across Australia.
A spokesperson for Valio said until now each individual customer for the group's powders would have to apply for the import licences themselves.
"It's a lot of paperwork and is quite time consuming. Now we are working with local distributors, that will make it easier for manufacturing companies to buy directly from them. They [MPD] have economies of scale as an advantage. If individual companies don't want to buy more at once and just want small volumes, it's quite expensive to transport all the way from Finland. Instead now, one company can buy more at once."
The milk powders will be used for the manufacture of food products which use milk in some form, either replacing liquid milk or regular milk powder for making products that are lactose-free but still contain milk ingredients.
