Pasta Filata Cheese Market – Insights
Pasta filata cheese is also known as spun paste or stretched curd. Pasta filata refers to the process of making cheese, in which heating and stretching curd takes place directly before forming a final cheese. This process is used to achieve desirable cooking characteristics and is mostly performed to produce mozzarella cheese. This is a traditional method, in which fresh curd is submerged into hot water and stretched by hand. Whereas, commercially pasta filata is made using mechanical mixers, in order to produce pasta filata cheese in bulk quantity.
The demand for pasta filata cheese is predicted to increase, owing to rising applications of cheese in residential as well as commercial food production industry coupled with various advantages offered by this type of cheese over others such as desired elasticity when heated and forming long strips when pulled. Baking pizzas and pastas using pasta filata cheese for residential use is a growing trend in the European and North American countries.
However, residential use is expected to witness a comparatively lower share in case of application during the forecast period. This is owing to increasing working population in both male and female. For instance, according to the World Bank data, in 2015, the global female labor force accounted for 38.96% of the total labor force and reached 39.07% in 2017. Moreover, the global labor force was 3.35 billion in 2015 and reached 3.43 billion in 2017. This trend is expected to boost growth of the commercial use segment during the forecast period.
Moreover, companies operating in the pasta filata market are developing cheese processing equipment, in order to meet the increasing demand for pasta filata cheese. For instance, Tetra Pak International S.A., a company offering processing and packaging solutions for food products, offers a fully automated system of pasta filata cheese production, which is specifically designed to control different parameters such as obtaining a narrow pH band for cheese and optimum cheese shape stability, which are important factors for further downstream processing.
However, cheese making involves fermentation process, which can cause microbial contamination in cheese products, and therefore cheese manufacturers have to follow stringent government regulations to assure safety and quality of the final product. For instance, according to the European Commission, E. coli content of >1,000 colony forming units (cfu)/g is unsatisfactory in cheese made from milk or whey that has undergone heat treatment.
According to regulation of European Commission No. 2515/94, for mozzarella cheese, typical micro flora resistant to curd stretching should not be less than 107 cfu/g in cheese samples analyzed within three days of the date of production. Moreover, alternatives or other cheese types such as vegan cheese (cheese prepared from soya) is expected to pose a threat to global pasta filata cheese market growth.
The global pasta filata cheese market was valued at US$ 55,492.8 Mn in 2018, and is expected to register a CAGR of 5.5%, in terms of revenue over the forecast period (2019-2027), to reach US$ 88,853.0 Mn by 2027.
Figure 1. Global Pasta Filata Cheese Market Share (%), By Region, 2018
Source: Coherent Market Insights, 2018-19
North America accounted for the largest revenue share of 33.6% in the global pasta filata cheese market in 2018, whereas Latin America is expected to record fastest growth during the forecast period. In Latin America, emerging economies such as Brazil and Argentina are expected to exhibit significant growth in the cheese industry, owing to increasing disposable income and urbanization in the region. According to the ‘Annual Dairy Report’ published by United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Services, in October 2018, yearly cheese consumption in Brazil was around 3.23 kilograms per person. Moreover, the report also states that cheese production in Brazil was 755,000 MT in 2018, and is projected to increase by around 2% to 770,000 MT in 2019. These factors are expected to contribute to growth of the pasta filata cheese market in the region.
Figure 2. Global Pasta Filata Cheese Market Share (%), By Cheese Type, 2018
Source: Coherent Market Insights, 2018-19
Based on cheese type, mozzarella segment held the dominant position and contributed 51.1% revenue share in the global pasta filata cheese market in 2018. Mozzarella is the most widely used pasta filata cheese globally. For instance, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), in December 2017, production of mozzarella cheese in the U.S. was 365,309 thousand pounds, which increased to 378,867 thousand pounds in December 2018.
Major players operating in the global pasta filata cheese market are The Kraft Heinz Company, Fonterra Co-operative Group Limited, Lactalis International, Grande Cheese Company, Arla Foods Inc., BelGioioso Cheese Inc., Organic Valley, That’s Amore Cheese, M.J. Dairies, and Sheepka 99 JSC.
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