In anybody’s book, it’s a big number. Nissim Avraham has taken the lead in growing Ontario’s milk market by 30 million litres in three short years, and he’s done
it mainly by tapping into a market that many other farmers say is too trendy, fickle and volatile for responsible business planning.
It’s the ethnic market, a market the gets dissed as “niche” in a lot of farm conversations. Yet with insights from Avraham in his role as the Dairy Farmers of Ontario’s ethnic market specialist, it has become a consistent bright spot for the province’s dairy sector.
Read Also
Riding the tariff rollercoaster
Farmers are accustomed to roller-coaster years. But the current geopolitical windstorm is something else entirely. On his cattle operation near…
How? Nissim says part of his success comes from being in the right place at the right time, but it’s clear he also knows what he’s doing.
According to Statistics Canada, much of our country’s population growth can be attributed to immigration. By 2017, when Canada celebrates its 150th anniversary, one out of every five people in Canada will be a member of a visible minority.
A growing and diverse Canadian population means there are new consumers and new opportunities for new dairy products. But it also means the new challenge of matching dairy products and dairy marketing with ethnic tastes and ethnic cultures.
“I take a different approach,” says Avraham. “I don’t look at what is missing. I look at what’s needed. Then I bring the distributors to the processors.”
Clearly, this take-charge business approach is working. Since Avraham began working with Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) in 2008, he has facili- tated the introduction of 50 new ethnic dairy products into the Ontario marketplace, creating new jobs and new working relationships.
The milk industry
DFO general manager Peter Gould says it’s serendipity that brought Avraham to his organization. If it was luck, though, it was along the lines of the old proverb about people making their own.
In 2008, DFO was in the process of developing a strategy to better-understand the ethnic marketplace and their part within it. “It was obvious the ethnic Canadian population was changing, especially in the Greater Toronto Area,” says Gould, who was introduced to Avraham through a mutual acquaintance.
Avraham was a dream fit. He had just completed his MBA at the University of Guelph, researching milk demand in the Middle Eastern community of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). He had chosen to complete his MBA after having difficulty getting into the agricultural industry when he first came to Canada in 1989.
Now armed with his MBA, plus a broad ag background including a BSc in agriculture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an agricultural management career in Africa, Avraham was looking for ways to make a name for himself in Canada’s ag sector.
At the time, Gould says milk sales weren’t exactly robust. Canadians were aging and the traditional thinking is that consumers drink less fluid milk as they get older. As well, in a way tha now seems ironic, market watchers also pointed to Canada’s growing ethnic mix to explain milk’s lacklustre performance. Ethnic populations, they said, simply don’t have the same dairy consumption habits as North Americans.
With a little enlightenment from Avraham, however, the DFO quickly realized Ontario’s changing population didn’t have to be a threat. Rather, it could be an opportunity, providing the dairy sector embraced it and committed itself to learning more about it.
“Dairy products are in high demand in ethnic communities like South Asians, and many rely on these for protein,” says Avraham.
Success stories
The South Asian community of the GTA was Avraham’s first target and he started generating success right away. “The community was in need of a real authentic product,” says Avraham. At the time, paneer, a fresh cheese common in South Asian cuisine was being sourced out-of-province but South Asian shoppers weren’t thrilled, basically using that word — authentic — to say what it lacked.
There was a disconnect however with Ontario cheese makers. They weren’t plugged into the ethnic market, so they had no way of knowing that there was a potential market on their doorstep, or how big it was.
So Avraham attacked the disconnect. He set up meetings with a processor, going into their offices with an ethnic distributor would could get very concrete about how much cheese he could sell, and at what price.
Still, the initial response was no. With their current technology, the processor said, they couldn’t make paneer cheese. Case closed.
Except, Avraham stopped at the plant’s retail story and bought a round of the company’s cheese. The distributor confirmed it. All that the plant needed to do was reduce salt content and they’d have a paneer they could instantly sell.
On the spot, the distributor placed an order for two tons a week. The plant is now shipping 25 tons a month and paneer is its most profitable product.
Avraham brings a unique energy to the market and says he listens to what’s needed. Processors now know that when he speaks he means business, and when he says “I will bring you the guy who’s ready to pay for the product,” there’s going to be real opportunity to explore.
Latin Americans also make up a significant portion of the GTA’s ethnic population and Avraham facilitated the processing of another fresh cheese he knew was similar to an existing Middle Eastern cheese.
“The trick is to identify a processor that already makes cheese similar to what an ethnic market wants,” Avraham says. Creating the product was important and along the way Avraham brought along a Latin American refugee who was a cheese maker himself to work with the plant to develop the product. Success was made even sweeter when high demand for the product led the processor to hire the refugee cheese maker.
It also helps that ethnic cheeses are often fresh rather than aged and provide an immediate cash flow. “We are bringing a market for fresh cheese, creating new jobs and providing a new source of income for processors,” says Avraham. “Everybody wins.”
Sometimes success is as simple as understanding the product itself. Avraham identified a processor that was marketing a curd cheese to a specific ethnic market. He knew other ethnic groups would buy it, but different packaging was needed. That same cheese is now sold to five different ethnic groups, each with its own packaging targeting their respective consumer markets.
Avraham’s successes have been realized through the Domestic Dairy Product Innovation Program (DDPIP) because without it, processing facilities would not have the extra milk available for new product development. The program provides processors access to milk for the development of new products and is designed to increase the overall demand of milk — and so far it’s working.
The innovation program has resulted in the recent one percent overall increase in Ontario milk quota production.
Heading west
Other provinces are starting to notice Ontario’s ethnic success and are looking at their own growing populations. Agreements have been made with DFO to share Avraham in western provinces to work with their processors and ethnic communities.
Not surprisingly, Avraham is already generating success in creating new dairy products for the West.
Meanwhile, there are over 200 distinct cultures in Canada and with the predicted increase in ethnic population growth combined with the positive momentum that DFO and Avraham have created the dairy industry in Ontario and across Canada feels it has a distinctly promising future.
“This means good things for the dairy industry,” says Gould. “It’s been a great three years and there’s no end in sight.”CG
