Elmhurst Dairy in Queens, New York has ceased its dairy operation after 90 years citing decreased customer demand. Since it was incorporated in the 1920’s, Elmhurst had grown to be one of the largest dairy manufacturers on the East Coast of the USA supplying a metropolitan area of seven million people. CEO Henry Schwartz said the company has been operating at a high cost in recent years and revealed that “Pasteurized fluid milk has sort of gone out of style,”… “we are unable to continue to go on without ongoing losses.” “There isn’t much room for our kind of business. I tried to keep this open because it was my father’s plant and he asked me to do so.” The shutdown reflects ongoing trends in the dairy milk business: increased consumer awareness of the treatment of cows in the milk industry, as well as consumer concern about saturated fat, cholesterol and hormones is causing year-on-year declining sales. Andrew Novakovic, a professor of agricultural economics at Cornell University, said milk consumption peaked in the late 1940s and has declined sharply in the last few years, from about 240 pounds per person in 2010 to about 120 pounds per person in 2015.
Kilde: This Dairy Company Is Ditching Dairy after 90 Years and Producing Plant-Based Milk Instead
