Lactalis lured by Czech cheese growth
French dairy giant Lactalis has enhanced its position in the growing cheese market of the Czech Republic by signing a deal to buy local firm Promil.
...
It [the report] said cheese was an area ripe for investment.
...
Euromonitor says quality has become increasingly important on the Czech cheese market, and has greatly improved in the last few years. Czech consumers, it adds, are very demanding: “The have many [cheeses] to choose from. They do not come back to products they were not satisfied with.”
...
Local cheeses were still cheaper than imported ones in 2005, according to Euromonitor, but imports rose by almost a third in 2004, on the back of the Czech Republic's entry into the European Union.

The country's top cheese producer, Madeta, is still Czech-owned, though second and third places on the market are occupied by French-owned subsidiaries.

The market for cheese in the Czech Republic remains fairly small compared to richer countries like the UK, where cheese sales were around £1.89bn (€2.7bn) in 2004, according to another market research group, Mintel.

To be honest, I picked this article for inclusion on this blog purely for its title. And it didn't disappoint, saying that cheese is ripe for investment. Also the fact that it was published in "Dairy news" gives me much enjoyment.

However, it is not a bad idea to remind ourselves of one of the reasons foreign cheese-makers are not as successful as local ones. I don't know about the rest of my compatriots, but I actually prefer the Czech cheeses to their foreign equivalents. They are much more subtle and not as pungent (with some notable exceptions). Here are the most common traditional Czech cheeses:

• eidam = Eidam, this cheese comes in two varieties depending on the content of fat - 30% and 40% that can be easily distinguished by the color of the wrapping (red and yellow respectively) - can be bought either either in blocks or sliced
• sýr na smažení = pretty much the same but sliced especially to make smažený sýr (deep-fried cheese - the most common 'vegeterian' dish available pretty much in any Czech restaurant no matter how dingy)
• hermelín = the Czech equivalent of brie (also sold pickled)
• niva = the Czech equivalent of blue cheese
• smažený hermelín/smažená niva = the above two but deep-fried
• olomoucké tvarůžky = a very pungent cheese from the Moravian town of Olomouc
• pivní sýr = another variety of the above drunk with beer and eaten with mustard and raw onions - an acquired taste but one many a foreigner brave enough to try it out in the first place got hooked on