Like the winds of fall, the overall milk category is experiencing “swirling” results. Market research firm Circana reports that in U.S. multi-outlets and convenience stores for the 52 weeks ending Aug. 11, the overall milk category, comprising refrigerated milk, refrigerated alternative milk, “all other” refrigerated milk, and non-dairy refrigerated milk, notched $19.6 billion in dollar sales at a slight 1.2% decrease over the prior year. In the “all other” refrigerated milk segment, however, it was near-perfect fall sunshine with 21.2% growth and $252 million in sales.

Yet, reflecting the temperatures of fall, it was a torrential downpour for the $4.4 billion refrigerated non-dairy segment, with declining year-over-year (YoY) sales of 53%, while units plummeted 65% to 1.3 billion. Refrigerated alternative milks, with sales of $2.5 billion and units of 636 million, slumped 5.2% and 5.5%, respectively.

John Crawford, Cirana’s senior vice president for Client Insights-Dairy, notes that both dairy and plant-based milks are still struggling. “Dairy is down -0.8% in dollars and -0.3% in volume, while Plant is down -5.2% and -6.2%, respectively,” Crawford says. “Plant has been struggling with increasing prices, while Dairy has been widening the price gap between Plant and Dairy.”

Chicago-based Euromonitor International’s Miri Eliyahu, a consultant researcher, concurs that unit price increases in dairy products and alternatives have impacted grocery aisles and foodservice.

“The result for most categories was a struggle to maintain volumes as consumers withdrew from routine high-volume buying to a more frugal consumption even of dairy products, a category that isn’t considered to be discretionary usually,” Eliyahu explains. “The second major trend is the return of minimally processed dairy products to the favor of consumers. Full-fat milk, high-fat butter, creams and other high-in-fats type of dairy products gained steam from consumers despite the nutritional label clearly stating this is a product that contains high values of fat per serving. The reason for this is a return to ‘natural’ products, and a move away from processed and ultra-processed foods, even in the dairy and alternatives space.

“Even though some forms of processing is acceptable to consumers, such as fortification of milk, they still prefer to leave out other modifications of dairy products and keep natural traits such as a high-fat content, which is now growing more popular in milk and is in its path to premiumization in butters and spreads, as well as creams,” she continues.

A September 2023 report from Los Angeles-based IBISWorld titled “Dairy Product Production in the US” also provided information on not only fluid milk and milk-based products, but data on dairy processors who manufacture cheese, dry, condensed, and evaporated milk products, and butter.

“As with many commoditized industries, revenue performance most greatly depends on trends within per-capita data consumption and national dairy prices. But since per-capita dairy consumption has stagnated going into 2023, revenue trends have primarily been derivative to price movements,” the report stated. “The price of milk’s stability is expected to uplift revenue at a [compound annual growth rate] (CAGR) of 4.5% to reach $163.5 billion in 2023. But by the same token, costs have also risen and have pressured industry profitability during the period [from 2018-2023].”