It’s like the calm before the storm. In Greece, which seems to have reached uncontrollable proportions, it is currently troubling the importers of dairy products in Germany, but mainly dairy products, which has been reduced to a registered trademark of Greece.
“For the time being, there is numbness”, says Mr. Tryfon Kolitsopoulos, business consultant in the development of sales networks and member of the federal board of the German-Greek Business Association DHW, based in Cologne, to BIMA.
They direct customers to yogurt
“From my contacts with dairy exporters, at the beginning of October, at the ANUGA exhibition in Cologne, the largest and most important food and beverage exhibition in the world, with a large Greek participation, we noticed in the Greek exhibitors a tendency to win new customers for the next year, with other dairy products, such as yogurt, and not with PDO feta. As we understand, due to sheep and goat pox, the raw material, Greek sheep and goat milk, will be limited for the coming months. Importers will try to meet the needs of their existing customers and will not seek new partnerships, new customers, because there will clearly be a shortage. What also impressed me at ANUGA was that the Greek exhibitors and exporters avoided giving prices to their customers for the new year, they were very cautious.”
The big “bang” is expected from December. “The price of feta will certainly increase before the holidays, because we will not have the quantities we need for our customers. At the moment, they have stocks until then,” says Giorgos Tsopirdis, from Hellas Import, a family-run business founded in 1969 based in Dormond. As he tells us, the Greek feta is the first thing his customers order. Feta is being worked on a lot in Germany, we have a great response. They ask us, not only Germans, but also Turks, Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, you understand that we will not be able to respond in time, we will not have the quantities we need, and we do not know when normality will return to the market”.
Calmness exercises also by Mr. Yiannis Paraschos, from Salatino Food GmbH, based in Cologne. He reminds us that even two years ago, there was a lack of milk and, consequently, a lack of feta on the market, as a result of which its price increased. Of course, the current situation cannot be compared to then, because normalization is not immediately visible, given that the disease is on the rise, the industry is in a state of emergency and the breeders are in despair.
A turn to “imitation” feta?
“There will be a serious problem, I don’t know what will happen, maybe some solution will be found, maybe imported milk will be used, or even powdered milk from China” says Mr. Tsopirdis. “Of course, serious, name-brand companies don’t, of course. But they will find some alternative, how else is it going to happen’? Mr. Kolitsopoulos reminds that Greek feta is a PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) registered product and is prepared under strictly specific conditions, with raw material Greek pasteurized sheep and goat milk, from specific regions of Greece and a specific ripening time. “Making feta with anything else is defamation of the product and is banned by the EU,” he says. “What I can imagine is that there will be chains in Germany and big shops that, to fill the gap, will produce the so-called Hirtenkäse (shepherd’s cheese), Balkan type, with cow’s milk, white like feta, but it will not be PDO feta. In other words, there will be feta, of course much less and more expensive, and the shelves will be filled with by-products of feta, second cheeses, but not feta. The problem is that when you make a PDO product, nobody can copy you.”
In addition to Greek feta, the lack of milk will also affect other Greek cheeses. There are sophisticated Germans who ask for graviera, kefalograviera, kefalotiri, manouri, mizithra. Of course, the slice comes first in demand, by far. The taste of the original is inextricably linked with memories of holidays in sunny Greece. Anyone who wants to take this mental trip to winter Germany will have to dig deep into their pockets…
