No Doubt About It, Blue Cheese Is A Growing Business

New statistics from USDA’s National Ag Statistics Service confirm what many people in the cheese industry already knew: the Blue cheese business has been growing at a pretty significant rate for a number of years now.

For over a decade, NASS wasn’t able to publish a production figure for Blue and Gorgonzola cheese. The last year NASS published a production figure was for 1997, when Blue and Gorgonzola output totaled a record 42.8 million pounds. That was roughly double the production back in 1969.

Also, that 42.8 million pounds of Blue and Gorgonzola cheese was produced in just 10 plants. At one time (1961), there were 25 plants in the US that were producing Blue and/or Gorgonzola cheese.

The Blue cheese industry then entered somewhat of a period of unknowns, when NASS stopped publishing both production and plant numbers (NASS won’t publish statistics when individual plant operations could be disclosed). This continued for over a decade.

Interestingly, during that period where statistics were lacking, the Blue cheese business appeared to be doing quite well. New companies were opening plants to produce Blue cheese, and existing companies were either opening new Blue cheese plants or expanding plants already producing Blue cheese.

Even despite the lack of firm statistics, there were some indications that this was a growing cheese category. For example, in the 1999 US Championship Cheese Contest, there were a total of 18 entries in the Blue-veined cheese class, from a total of 10 plants.

In the 2011 US Championship Cheese Contest, there were actually two separate classes for Blue-veined cheese, one for Blue-veined cheeses with exterior molding, the other for cheeses veined with blue molds and no surface mold development. There were also blue-veined cheeses in the goat’s milk and sheep’s milk classes.

The two cow’s milk classes for Blue-veined cheese drew a total of 31 entries from roughly 17 plants in 2011.

Despite signs of expansion, statistics were pretty much non-existent for the Blue cheese business from 1998 until a couple of weeks ago, when NASS released its Dairy Products 2011 Summary, which includes production figures for 2011 (and revised 2010 statistics).

And that report contained something that hadn’t been seen for over a decade for Blue and Gorgonzola cheese: production statistics and plant numbers.

So it was mighty interesting to see, for example, that Blue and Gorgonzola production last year totaled an impressive 85.9 million pounds, which is more than double the output back in 1997, the last year for which production numbers were available.

And there were a total of 30 plants producing Blue and/or Gorgonzola cheese in the US last year. That’s three times as many plants as in 1997.

How do those numbers compare with, for example, the overall US cheese market? Well, US cheese production grew from about 7.3 billion pounds in 1997 to around 10.6 billion pounds last year, an increase of roughly 45 percent.

That’s pretty impressive, but pales in comparison to the growth exhibited by the Blue cheese industry.
Also, the number of cheese plants in the US grew from 412 in 1997 to 524 last year, an increase of about 27 percent. Again, that’s pretty impressive (especially considering that cheese plant numbers fell below 400 in both 1998 and 1999 and were still under 412 as recently as 2005), but the increase in the number of plants producing Blue and Gorgonzola is truly remarkable.

So, just how big is the US market for Blue and Gorgonzola cheese here in 2012? In addition to the tremendous increase in domestic production over the past decade and a half, it’s worth remembering that the US is also a significant importer of Blue-veined cheeses. Indeed, some of these cheeses, such as Roquefort and Stilton, are better known that most domestic Blues.

Last year, licensed US imports of Blue Mold cheese (this doesn’t include all imports of these cheeses) totaled 6.1 million pounds, down just slightly from 2010. Over 5.0 million pounds of this Blue Mold cheese came from just two countries: Denmark and Germany.

Adding up the imports and the domestic production, it’s safe to conclude that the Blue cheese business in the US is somewhere around 95 million pounds per year. And growing.

One additional note concerning USDA statistics: USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) publishes annual per capita consumption figures for cheese and other dairy products.

ERS estimated that, from 2000 through 2007, per capita consumption of Blue and Gorgonzola was 0.20 pounds per year. Per capita consumption was then estimated to have declined to 0.19 pounds in 2009 and to 0.18 pounds in 2010.

Based on the new production figures, it seems that ERS will have to do a significant upward revision for 2010. Based on a July 1, 2011 US population estimate of about 311.5 million people, per capita consumption of Blue and Gorgonzola cheese last year was around 0.30 pounds.

And while production figures aren’t available for the period of 1998 through 2009, it seems pretty safe to conclude that per capita consumption of Blue and Gorgonzola cheese probably increased ever so slightly during most if not all of those years.

Thanks to the new production and plant numbers from NASS, the US cheese industry is able to confirm, and put numbers behind, what’s been known for a number of years now: that the market for Blue-veined cheeses is alive, well and growing at a pretty impressive rate in the US. DG

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