The Changing Structure of Retailing: Consequent Impact on Players in the Dairy Industry Available to Purchase

Buying power within the European food sector is becoming concentrated within the hands of a relatively few but highly powerful retailing groups. This industry restructuring will have profound implications for all food manufacturers and processors during the next decade. Dairy companies, of any scale, will need to be innovative,flexible, produce high quality products and have good distribution links in order to survive. Established international dairy businesses such as BSN and Yoplait are sufficiently geared up to face a relatively secure future. It is the smaller nationally oriented dairy processors which will be most at risk from an increasingly concentrated and aggressive retailing sector.