Australian manufacturers produce a range of milk powders. The technology used in both the production and use of powders has seen the range of specifications available from Australian manufacturers expand in line with customer’s needs.

In 2012/13, Australia produced 118,200 tonnes of butter and anhydrous milkfat (AMF) or butteroil in commercial butter equivalent terms (CBE).small 1% decrease on the previous year.

AMF is butter with the water removed. It is primarily produced for export and domestic food processing applications, such as bakery and confectionery. While these sectors also use butter, the majority of domestic butter sales are through retail and food service outlets.

Australia produced 338,300 tonnes of cheese in 2012/13a decline of 2.4% on the previous year. Production volumes are significantly less than earlier in the decade as the availability of milk trended downward since that time. Another factor in more recent years, as milk production has stabilized at lower levels, has been the impact of dairy companies opportunistically changing their export product mixes to take advantage of favourable movements in international dairy commodity prices.

Whey is a by-product of the cheese making process. Traditionally this product was disposed of in liquid form. However, recognition of the value of wheys components has seen the production and utilisation of whey powders and protein concentrates increase significantly in recent years.
Food-grade whey powder is used in the manufacture of ice-cream, bakery products (cakes, biscuits), chocolate flavouring, infant formula, yogurt, beverages and processed meat. Industrial uses include animal feed (for pigs, horses and poultry), calf milk replacer and even as a carrier for herbicides.

Creamy in colour and creamy in body, cream is the fat component of milk. It contains around 48% milk fat in its natural state. The Food Standards Code (Standard 2.5.2) defines cream as a milk product comparatively rich in fat, in the form of an emulsion of fat in skim milk, which can be obtained by separation from milk. Cream forms naturally as light fat. Remove the cream and you are left with skim milk. During production, centrifugal force is used to accelerate the separation of the cream from the milk which is placed in large vats. Cream comes in a number of different forms to suit every taste and application.