A dairy for all seasons

摘要

Last year, Gropper celebrated its 90th anniversary. The company has grown considerably since its founding: the erstwhile cheese maker is now a mid-sized enterprise producing private label dairy products, not-from-concen-trate (NFC) juices, smoothies, and bottled water for customers across Europe. Gropper now processes around 350 million litres of milk a year. Despite these enormous quantities, regionalism still plays an important role, as Berthold Burgmeier, head of engineering, explains: "We source our milk from around 870 farmers within a 70-kilometre radius of the dairy. The only exception is organic milk, which we also source from the foothills of the Alps since there are not enough organic dairy farms in our region to meet our needs."