News

One million pledged to dairy Beverage Innovation Center

Wisconsin’s dairy farmers and state government are investing in additional dairy product research.

Governor Tony Evers told the Cheese Industry Conference that the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation will invest 750-thousand dollars, “to establish the Beverage Innovation Center, a new center for excellence that would be housed in the Center for Dairy Research on the University of Wisconsin campus.”

Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin CEO Chad Vincent says farmers are contributing through the checkoff program another 250-thousand. “The Center for Dairy Research and the innovation is critical, and it’s one of the best investments that we make.” Vincent tells Brownfield their farmer members have supported the Center for Dairy Research for more than 20 years.

Dr. John Lucey with Wisconsin’s Center for Dairy Research says this will allow them to purchase equipment for small batches to test many new potential dairy-based beverages. This will be a one-of-a-kind effort here in the U.S. Lucey says the only place this type of work can be done now is a couple of large commercial sites owned by equipment companies, and this will be the only one on a university campus and scaled for smaller batches.

Lucey says, “Our goal is to make anything that people can think of, whether it’s to make new ingredients or new flavors, new textures, maybe even some acidified products, products with particulates or other materials in there.  The sky is the limit for us.  We think there’s a lot of people out there that are innovative and want to innovate within the beverage space and we want to just add dairy components in there and add dairy in some way and get dairy nutrition into it.  We think the sky is the limit out there.”

He tells Brownfield along with new beverages and new types of packaging, “We’re looking for long shelf life because people want convenience and they want to be able to have this anywhere.”

Lucey says the university’s beverage team and several entrepreneurs have several recipes and potential products they are anxious to test when the equipment arrives.

The announcement was made at the Cheese Industry Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation is a public-private partnership with a mission of growing Wisconsin business and developing a talented workforce.

Listen to Brownfield’s interviews and the press conference from the Beverage Innovation Center funding here: