Optimism abounds among dairy executives

Meilhac is a sourcing and operations leader, drawing on nearly 20 years of hands-on experience in the food and beverage industry. Throughout his executive tenure, he led procurement departments through the challenges of sourcing direct materials from heavily regulated, commoditized, and customized markets. He helped achieve successful operating free-cash-flow improvement while securing supply and innovating and improving quality.

Since joining McKinsey, Meilhac has led strategy development, comprehensive operational turnarounds, and supply-chain transformations across the agriculture and food and beverage sector. He has worked with clients all over the world, including Europe, Latin America and North America.

During this podcast, Meilhac addresses the following:

• What the seventh-annual Dairy Survey examines and who is being surveyed.
• Conclusions McKinsey made after conducting the survey, including that 70% of dairy executives are optimistic about the future of the dairy industry.
• The survey reveals 69% of dairy executives cited managing costs as their top priority. What are some ways they are doing so?
• Nearly two-thirds of dairy executives plan to increase investments in product innovation in the next five years, and 79% plan to increase their spend on manufacturing innovation during the same period. Why are they seeing this as a huge need?
• Nearly 80% of leaders surveyed expect volume growth greater than 3% over the next three years. Should we take this as a sign of optimism for the dairy industry?

To read more about the McKinsey survey, click here. DF

Ludovic Meilhac, expert partner at McKinsey & Co., joins Dairy Foods for Episode 55 of the “Let’s Talk Dairy” podcast to discuss dairy trends.