Top 10 global dairy firms – in pictures

Dairy giants needed to seek mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to sustain rates of growth or overtake the competition, Rabobank claimed in its annual dairy survey.

As a result of the “challenging conditions”​ many businesses have found it hard to secure growth over the past year, it added.

Here, we bring you, in pictures, the top 10 dairy companies in the world.

Rabobank analyst Tim Hunt said the last 18 months had seen most of the big players battle challenging conditions, with weak economies undermining sales growth in key markets.

“Once again, giants Nestlé, Danone and Lactalis top the list, showing that the world’s largest dairy companies are reasonably entrenched,”​ he said. “We continue to see some companies outperform their peers in sheer growth terms.” ​

To find out which firms had been performing well, click through our gallery.

Acquisitions ​

Acquisitions have become a more attractive route to grow sales with 124 dairy transactions in 2013, the highest since 2007, Hunt claimed. There were 111 deals in 2012.

However, despite the increase in transactions, the dairy sector saw no billion dollar deals in the last 12 months.

In the year to date we have already seen 41 dairy transactions.

Mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures remained a key avenue to growth and profitability, Hunt claimed.

“The catch is that the number of attractive targets is shrinking and multiples have risen,”​ he added. “With billion dollar value deals harder to come by, dairy giants will need to acquire, or tie up with, more companies than in the past to sustain the same rates of growth.”​

Note: Turnover data are dairy sales only, based on 2013 financials and M&A transactions completed between 1 January and 15 June 2014; the pending merger of Arla Foods and Walhorn is not included.