Dairy Products

Dairy products are generally defined as foodstuffs produced from milk. Usually high energy-yielding food products, forming an important part of our diet.

Some of the many dairy products: cheese, yoghurt, ice-cream, (flavored) milk drinks, butter, custard, milk powder, whey, sweet condensed milk.

Some dairy products are raw materials which our customers use in their production, like whey powder, sweet condensed milk and milk powder. Here we prefer to focus on those dairy products that are our customers' end-products.

Flavored milks , like chocolate milk, are sweetened and flavored milk drinks. Other ingredients, such as starch, salt, carrageenan, vitamins (A, D), vanilla, (artificial) flavorings and stabilizers (like CMC and pectin) may be added.

Yoghurt is a dairy product produced by bacterial fermentation of milk. Yogurt is made with a variety of ingredients including milk, sugars, stabilizers, fruits and flavors, and a bacterial culture. Emulsifiers and preservatives may also be added in the process.

Custard is a range of preparations based on milk and eggs. As a dessert, it is made from a combination of milk or cream, egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla. Sometimes flour, corn starch, or gelatin are also added.

Butter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. Butter consists of butterfat, water and milk proteins, to which salt, flavorings and preservatives are sometimes added. Rendering butter produces clarified butter or ghee, which is almost entirely butterfat. See our information of margarines for more details.

Cheese consists of proteins and fat from milk, and is produced by coagulation of the milk protein casein. Raw materials used in cheese production are milk, enzymes and cheese cultures, but for Chemelco the most interesting are salt and calcium chloride.

Processed cheese is made from traditional cheese and sometimes other unfermented
dairy ingredients with emulsifying salts, often with more salt, preservatives, and coloring. It is inexpensive, consistent, melts smoothly and has an extended shelf life.
With prolonged heating, unprocessed cheese will separate into a molten protein
gel and liquid fat; processed cheese will not separate in this manner.
Commonly used emulsifying salts are sodium phosphates, potassium phosphates, tartrates, or citrates. As a preservative sorbic acid is widely used. For the colors carotenal, beta carotene and annatto (in cheddar cheese) are popular.

Ice cream is a frozen dessert usually made from milk and/or cream and sugar combined with fruits or flavors.
Other common ingredients are high fructose corn syrup, emulsifiers (lecithin, glycerol monostearate, polysorbate 80), gums (guar gum, xanthan gum, carageenan, methylcellulose) and sometimes sodium citrate, phosphates, calcium and magnesium salts. See our information of ice cream for more details.