Plant-based alternative milk sales up by 33 percent: Milk & More

Sales of oat milk and other plant-based dairy alternatives have jumped by 33 per cent in the past year, says Milk & More as the doorstep delivery business’ customers pivot towards sustainable shopping.

Milk & More, Britain’s biggest traditional milk delivery company with a total revenue of £167 million in 2021, said that 10 per cent of its customers buying milk had added plant-based alternatives to their shopping baskets, The Times reported on Monday (1).

Oat milk was the most popular option, representing 75 per cent of non-dairy milk sales for the company. Oato, a brand of oat milk produced in Lancashire and delivered in reusable glass bottles, accounted for nearly half of these sales.

Milk & More, meanwhile, is aiming to use 500,000 fewer bottles a year by tweaking its systems so that each one can be reused 15 percent more, as glass prices cost of glass bottles doubled in recent years.

Patrick Müller, the chief executive, said Milk & More, which sells more than a million litres of dairy and dairy alternative milks a week, was also urging customers to return more bottles to ensure they could be reused.

Contrary, oat milk brand Oatly has slumped to a new low as losses widened further while the brand continues to struggle to convert more consumers from dairy to plant-based, according to recent reports.

CEO Toni Petersson blamed a “challenging operating environment”, referencing the war in Ukraine, ongoing Covid disruption in China and “inflationary and supply chain pressures”.

He added the macroeconomic uncertainty had affected the expansion of its distribution footprint in foodservice and new markets. “The pace at which we have been able to convert new consumers from dairy to plant-based milk is taking longer than we had hoped and we expect this to continue for the remainder of the year,” he said