Indulac Puerto Rico expands excess milk exports
Indulac officials announced several initiatives to expand consumption of excess milk produced in Puerto Rico. (Credit: © Mauricio Pascual)
Industrias Lecheras de Puerto Rico, or Indulac, announced Wednesday it has struck agreements to export more than 5 million quarts of excess milk produced on the island to the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean islands to prevent dumping and open new markets for local milk.
The company also announced the restart of production of its white cheese, which has been absent from supermarket shelves for several years.
The agreements call for selling more than a million quarts of milk from June to December to two companies and expand deals closed several months ago with three other companies to push the total to more than 4 million quarts of milk, said Indulac President Larry Lugo.
Indulac sells UHT and pasteurized whole milk to different companies in the Dominican Republic to complement the consumption of locally produced milk, which represents only 60 percent of consumption.
In addition to this deal, Indulac also doubled sales to St. Thomas and St. Croix to 720,000 quarts of milk, from the 360,000 currently sold.
“Despite these achievements, we continue negotiations with other Caribbean islands and the Consulate of Venezuela to increase our exports,” said Lugo. “After years of talks with the South American country, we hope that these negotiations will soon bear fruit and we begin exporting about half a million quarts of milk a year. These processes take time but we’re confident we’ll succeed.”
Meanwhile, Indulac also announced the return of its flagship white cheese product starting next month, which will consume another 2 million quarts of excess milk a year. The company will also continue developing other cheese varieties to launch in the future, he said.
The company, which works with local dairy farmers to process excess milk not purchased by processing plants Tres Monjitas and Suiza Dairy, will also introduce to market a new UHT milk product that will use up 1.5 million quarts per year.
Puerto Rico produces about 275 million quarts of milk per year of which 225 million are used in the sale of fresh milk. The 50 million quarts in excess are used for Indulac’s UHT products, UHT milk sold under private labels, and exports.
