COUNTRY REPORT ▶▶▶
Spain’s dairy industry – an inside view
When we think of Spain, we probably think of paella, flamenco, bullfighting and a lot of sunshine. It’s no wonder the Spanish tourism sector represents 12% of the country’s GDP, whereas the agriculture, livestock, silviculture and fishing sector barely 2.6%. However, the dairy industry is one of the most important in Spanish agri-business, which has a turnover of around € 13 billion a year, creating more than 60,000 direct jobs.
BY ZHANDRA ZULETA
“The Spanish dairy sector does not oper- ate in isolation in our country, but rather we are part of a global sector in which there are many intercon- nections,” says Luis Calabozo.
A
ccording to Luis Calabozo, general director of the National Federation of Dairy Industries of Spain (FeNIL), the industrial arm of the sector has a turn- over of around € 9 billion a year, which represents
2% of industrial production in the country, creates 30,000 jobs and represents almost 8% of employment in the agri-food sector.
In the EU According to data from the European Commission, Spain is one of the six major producers of cow milk in the EU, along- side Germany, France, Poland, the Netherlands and Italy. To- gether, they are responsible for almost 70% of the communi- tarian milk production. Of the 156 million tonnes that the EU is estimated to produce per year, Spain provides 4.6%, having provided 7.2 million tonnes in 2019.
“The sum of the deliveries of cow, sheep and goat milk made in 2019 shows that the dairy industry absorbs more than 8.2 million tonnes of milk from Spanish origin per year,” says Calabozo. He is talking about cow milk production plus the 512,000 tonnes of sheep milk and 475,000 tonnes of goat milk exported by Spain in 2019. According to the figures from the Spanish Agricultural Guar- antee Fund, FEGA, Spain is the top exporting country of goat milk in the European Union and the second producer of this dairy, representing 20% of EU production. Furthermore, Iberi- ans produce around 15% of sheep milk and 5% of the total cow milk output in the EU. In spite of these figures, Spain still imports more dairy prod- ucts than it exports, and the imports “have played a relevant role in the sector as a consequence of historic matters derived from the European production quota system that existed un- til April 2015. More than 98% of the imports were provided by other EU countries,” claims Calabozo. Nevertheless, this tendency has been changing for some time now. According to data from the Directorate General of Customs, since 2010 the trade balance of this sector in Spain has im- proved continuously, reducing by almost 70% the trade defi- cit it experienced at the beginning of the decade, which start- ed with 800,000 tonnes more imported than that produced in the country. In 2019, this gap had been reduced to less than 300,000 tonnes.
Star product – cheese The most internationally recognised Spanish dairy product is cheese, shipments of which increased more than 230% between 2010 and 2019, going from 46,000 to 107,000 tonnes exported. “The offer of Spanish cheese is very wide, although we could say that traditional Spanish pressed paste cheese is the most representative of our country, both in its pure sheep version and mixtures (e.g. Manchego, Zamorano, etc.),” adds Calabozo. Currently, cheese represents almost half of the Spanish dairy sector’s imports, with a total of 309,742 tonnes im- ported in 2019, followed by yoghurts and fermented milk products, with 174,277 tonnes. As a counterpart to the cheese export figures we must add the 123,484 tonnes of yoghurt and fermented milk products exported in the same period, which together account for almost half of the sector’s total exports.
10 ▶DAIRY GLOBAL | Volume 7, No. 5, 2020
PHOTO: FENIL
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