Sales of dairy ingredients, butter set record at Land O'Lakes
Dairy sales also rose at Nestle, Arla and Kraft.
Land O'Lakes Inc., Arden Hills, Minn., said that its Dairy Foods business segment in 2013 generated record pretax earnings of $75 million on sales of $4.5 billion, up 8% from 2012. The results were driven by improved margins on milk powders and butter in Global Dairy Ingredients along with records in sales volume and earnings in the Retail Foods and Foodservice businesses.
Yesterday the dairy cooperative announced record annual sales for the entire business of $14.2 billion, up 4.4% from the prior year, and record net earnings of almost $306 million, a 27% increase over the prior year. The farmer-owned, Fortune 200 food and agriculture cooperative has more than doubled annual sales and grown net earnings by more than 330% over the last seven years, according to the company.