GOODS & SERVICES: Concentrated Milk

GOODS & SERVICES

With a splash of full-page newspaper ads, two Boston dairies started the first big sales of a new product that many dairymen think may revolutionize the dairy industry. The new product: concentrated milk, a heavy, creamy-looking milk with two-thirds of the fluid taken out.

Concentrated milk differs from evaporated and condensed milk, which are processed at high temperatures and have a cooked flavor. Concentrated milk is made under lower pressures and temperatures than the others, thus has no cooked taste. When water is added, it looks and tastes like fresh whole milk, has the same food values.

Last week Boston's Deerfoot Farms, a National Dairy subsidiary, and H. P. Hood & Sons thought the new product was doing fine. National put concentrated milk on sale last November in Wilmington, Del., liked the results so well that it decided to go into Boston for a bigger test. Hood immediately began to compete with National. Borden's and Beatrice Foods Co., a pioneer in concentrate experiments, are selling concentrated milk in Ohio and Illinois.

This flurry of activity is no surprise to dairymen. For years they have been trying to cut down their milk transportation bill by separating out the water, which makes up 87% of milk. Some dairymen think the new concentrate is the answer. They also think it might cut into evaporated milk's market because it, too, may prove to be more easily digested than fresh milk.

The concentrate must be kept refrigerated, but if kept at the right temperature will stay fresh as long as ten or eleven days. Other advantages to the consumer: concentrated milk takes up less space in the refrigerator, can be used straight as a cream substitute, and eventually may cost less than fresh whole milk. In most of the test areas, a one-third-quart container of concentrate (which makes a quart of milk) sells for about the same price as fresh milk. But when the customer buys a quart of concentrate at a store, he saves several cents a quart on the three quarts of milk it makes.

Eventually, dairymen hope to improve the concentrate to such an extent that it can be kept for longer periods. The concentrate could then be shipped long distances at one-third the present shipping cost of fresh milk. When this is done, the producers in the Midwest, who sell milk more cheaply than those in the East and South, will be able to branch out and bring cheaper milk to the rest of the country.