阿拉福兹

Arla Foods' objective is to be the consumers' and customers' preferred dairy. In Northern Europe--with a wide range of dairy products. In Southern Europe--with selected ranges of cheese and butter. Outside Europe--with a product range adapted to the individual markets. Moreover, Arla Foods intends to maintain and develop its position as an innovative global supplier of added value, milk-based ingredients for leading food producers throughout the world. With Northern Europe as its natural domestic market, Arla Foods is dedicated to providing consumers with a broad range of high-class dairy products. From a solid base in Denmark and Sweden, where the Group has its roots, Arla Foods aims at maintaining close links with customers in all key export markets through a network of sales companies. In addition, through Arla Foods Ingredients, the Group is one of the world's leading global suppliers of added-value, milk-based ingredients to selected sectors of the food industry. Arla Foods's nearly 15,000 dairy farmer owners have helped make it one of the world's leading dairy products manufacturers and the leading dairy group in Europe. Mejeriselskabet Danmark changes its name to MD Foods and prepares for international expansion. MD Foods launches its U.K. expansion with the acquisition of Associated Fresh Foods. MD Foods acquires Klover Melk, the second-largest dairy cooperative in Denmark, gaining control of 90 percent of the Danish dairy market. MD Foods and Arla merge to form Arla Foods amba, the largest dairy products group in Europe. Arla Foods amba is a cooperative formed by the 2000 merger between Sweden's Arla and Denmark's MD Foods. The company controls 95 percent and 65 percent of the dairy production markets in Denmark and Sweden, respectively. Yet these countries represent only half of Arla Foods's Dkr 38 billion ($4.66 billion) in annual sales. The United Kingdom is the company's third-largest market, accounting for 16.8 percent of sales; Germany and the rest of Europe add 18 percent of sales; while the company is also active in the Middle East and Asia, which together provide more than 11.5 percent of sales. Fresh milk products are the company's largest product segment, with more than 40 percent of sales. Cheese, including the international brand success Rosenborg, provides 28 percent of sales. Arla Foods is also one of the world's leading suppliers of powdered milk products, which add 15 percent of sales, and a strong player in the butter market, particularly under its 100-year-old Lurpak brand. Butter and spreadables generate 11 percent of sales. The merger between Arla and MD Foods represented a major step forward in what many observers consider the necessary consolidation of the European dairy industry as it braced itself for competition on a global scale. At the beginning of 2002, Arla Foods revealed that it had been holding merger talks with one of the United Kingdom's largest dairies, Express Dairies. Concern that such a merger would not pass the review of monopolies and merger commissions forced the two sides to abandon talks, however. The merger of Swedish dairy cooperative Arla with its Danish counterpart, MD Foods, created Europe's leading dairy products company in 2000. Both companies had their roots in the cooperative movements of the late 19th century. The world's first cooperative appeared in Rochdale, England, in 1844, establishing a set of principles that were to be adopted throughout the world. The cooperative movement reached Sweden by the 1860s; at the end of that decade, a new cooperative was formed among dairy producers that was to form the basis of the later Arla ek. for. group. As with other countries, dairy cooperatives operated at first on a largely local level. As production methods improved, and as transporting raw milk and dairy products became easier, local cooperatives began to group together into a smaller number of larger cooperatives. Over the following decades, the number of dairy