The United States has rightfully earned its place among the best cheese-making countries in the world. 

Fresh off a win at the World Championship Cheese Contest, the United States has rightfully earned its place among the best cheese-making countries in the world. 

With young Koreans craving cheese, restaurants and food companies are serving up cheesier offerings, presenting a growing opportunity for U.S. dairy exporters.

Young, middle-class Vietnamese are driving foodservice growth and demand for cheese.

In 2013, America's cheese suppliers held the No. 1 global market share position.

Through the first seven months of 2013, volume jumped 27 percent to 6,503 metric tons.

In this issue, USDEC’s Middle East office representative provides a number of insights on the region. Among them: 1) the Middle East is erroneously seen as universally in turmoil; and 2) for U.S. suppliers to make inroads into what is a lucrative and growing dairy market, they need to put in more face time.

In all the media reports about the ambitious global expansion plans of McDonald’s, Subway and the Yum! family of restaurants (Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell), it might seem like the mega-chains are the only international game in town. There is in fact a thriving, locally-based, foodservice-chain second tier in most emerging markets that is expanding rapidly, increasingly beyond national boundaries and into surrounding regions. Often specializing in U.S.-style fare, many of these restaurants are sizeable users of cheese and prime examples of growing but often-overlooked potential customers for U.S. dairy.

Since Jan. 1, at least 17 companies have announced significant plans to expand existing cheese manufacturing facilities or build new cheese plants. Geographically, the tally breaks out as follows: one in Japan, one in South America, three in Australia, six in Europe and six in the United States. That does not include projects that started taking milk over the past five months—like Brasil Foods’ new mozzarella plant in Itumbiara, Brazil—or new cheese capacity expansions that are on the drawing boards.

You’ve read before in this column and likely in other ag and food business publications about rising global dairy demand, rising dairy appetites in emerging markets and rising export opportunities for U.S. suppliers. This time, let’s get specific and delve more deeply into just what “globalization” looks like for cheese.

There’s a general pattern to how cultures new to dairy take up the products—a learning curve of acceptance. It goes something like this: milk powder to fluid milk to yogurt to cheese. China is nearing the cheese stage.